Felix Klein, the Federal Government’s Antisemitism Commissioner, calls for the preservation of the remembrance culture on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“The unfathomable crimes of the NS era, the industrial murder of millions of people, belong to German history and shape our understanding of democracy, freedom, law and injustice and thus our entire society to this day”Klein told the “Rheinische Post”(Monday edition).
“The call for an end to it all from individual voices is so senseless. While this call recently mainly came from the right, to free their ideological predecessors from guilt, we now also hear it from the left in relation to the Middle East conflict. Jewish life in Germany is as endangered today as it was not since the Shoah”Klein said.
“Anti-Semitic crimes are at an all-time high. Anti-Semitism is not only directed against Jewish women and men, but is an expression of a fundamentally anti-democratic attitude and rejects the achievements of our modern, free society. For the protection of democracy, the preventive fight against anti-Semitism plays a crucial role.”Klein added, “A key factor against it is also the remembrance culture. I am of the firm opinion: the future can only be shaped by those who know their past.”
Each year on January 27, the victims of the Holocaust are commemorated worldwide. The date reminds us of the liberation of the surviving prisoners of the largest NS concentration camp, Auschwitz, by the Red Army on January 27, 1945.