Merkel's visit to Auschwitz

There have been a few years of growing voices in Germany demanding that past be left past and end the permanent confrontation with the blame Germany has charged nationalism. At the same time, hate crimes against the Jews are increasing.

Both of these are understood to be in context. Two months ago, two people from a right extreme died, who, on the most important day of the Jewish festival, Jom Kipppur, attempted to attack a synagogue filled with believers in Halle (Saale). In the end, it was only chance that averted the massacre. The Jews in Germany have again begun to fear for their lives. That's a terrible truth!

It coincides with the Chancellor's pragmatistic and clear personality, which its first visit to the former German extermination camp is at the invitation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation. The foundation is engaged in preserving memorial monuments. Conform this line of thought followed Merkel's speech, that the memory and especially German responsibility never ends. History must repeatedly confess “permanently” “Auschwitz was an extermination camp set up by the Germans.” This responsibility always remains a part of national identity and will never end.

Anyone who has been in Auschwitz, guess how difficult a German prime minister can find the right words in that country. Angela Merkel found them. It does not limit itself to the dullness of guilt. But it produces very clear options for the present. It is not simply rhetoric to draw attention to the new crimes stemming from intolerance, Merkel said. Today, we are also experiencing racism and hateful discourses. Anti - Semitism is becoming a life threat to Jews in Germany and Europe. And Auschwitz places a duty on anyone to engage in the defense of another's dignity. We should never forget. This chapter should never be closed. Nor should it be related. ”

For 14 years. Angela Merkel is German Chancellor and the conscious solidarity with hebraism and the reflective memory of Nazi cruelty are inseparable components of her mandates as Chancellors. She was five times in the Israeli Holocaust memorial, Yad Veshem, in 2009, with then US President Barack Obama, was at the Buhenwald (German) concentration camp in 2013, visiting survivors in the Dahau (Germany), in 2015, again being there on the occasion of his 70th liberation.

Now the Chancellor was for the first time in Auschwitz, the camp, which as no other country, symbolizes Nazi crimes considered the metaphor of mass industrial killings. Over a million people were killed there. To me, as a German, it's shocking and embarrassing to say: Since the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany, it is more important than ever that it went there right now at a time when anti-Semitism and nationalism are regaining their place in the German Parliament, and when Jews are again afraid to move freely in Germany's streets and synagogues. / DW/