Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has reaffirmed Germany’s responsibility to commemorate the Holocaust in the face of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. “From this place, a sense of responsibility arises for Germany. This responsibility remains” he wrote on Monday, on the occasion of his visit to the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
“We remember the at least six million Jewish women and men who were murdered. We remember all those who were declared enemies of the national socialist ideology, persecuted and murdered” the Chancellor said.
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier also expressed his deep distress. “Auschwitz stands for the millions of murders planned and meticulously prepared by Germans. Auschwitz stands for the monstrosity of a crime unparalleled in human history, for death, for unimaginable suffering, for torture and suffering, for executions, for hunger, for extermination through work, for anti-Semitism and for racial mania, for the break in civilization of the Shoah.”
“Auschwitz was liberated 80 years ago and as the German Federal President, I am grateful that I can commemorate here today, together with survivors and representatives from many other states” Steinmeier said.
“There are not many survivors left. Many of those I had the chance to meet in the past and over the years are no longer with us. We miss them, but their stories, their experiences live on through us and are a warning and a charge at the same time” the Federal President emphasized.
“What the eyewitnesses have to say and still have to say is of inestimable value, but it is now up to our generations to continue their warning and their expectation for the next generation. And I, as the German Federal President, say: We in Germany, we do not forget. Remembrance knows no endpoint and, therefore, neither does responsibility” the head of state explained.