As German ambassador, I represent the country of the perpetrator. This is a defining part of my country’s history and responsibility, my history and responsibility.
I will never forget the first realization as a child of the horrors of the Shoah. It came through a documentary. I cannot remember exactly when this was, but I remember the shock of seeing the mountains of hair, of glasses, of shoes, seeing the chimneys, the corpses, and realizing what all this meant, then and ever since.
That my grandparents’ generation committed the industrialized murder of six million Jews in Europe – as perpetrators, willing bystanders who looked the other way – this is not something you can ever come to terms with or understand. And the questions. “What have my grandparents done?” “What would I have done?” These questions are haunting, and they never leave us.
I have served in Israel twice as a diplomat, both for the European Union and the German Federal Republic. One of my three children was born there, and the relationship I and my family have with that country, but also Germany has with the State of Israel, is like no other. And I can only say that we were extremely touched and incredibly grateful for the time we were able to serve there and the way Israelis have welcomed us, despite the unspeakable crimes my countrymen have committed on the Jewish people.
The same is true for the Jewish community in Canada who has welcomed us with open arms and great warmth. I’m humbled and deeply touched by this, and we know that this is a treasure that must never be taken for granted.
Holocaust remembrance and Holocaust Education today are more important than ever and that work that you, Mina, and CHES are doing is incredible. We routinely say, “Never Again”, but it’s much more difficult to ensure that our children understand what that really means.
We speak of Auschwitz as the breach of civilization and yet, we see the hatred again. That antisemitism is on the rise in my country, especially since October 7th, is something that fills me with deep shame and rage. We have, as a government, taken numerous steps to combat antisemitism from banning groups such as Samidoun* a year ago to investing in education, prevention, law enforcement, but still, we fail to often.
To continue to give testimony to the incredible crimes of the Shoah and the courage needed to survive is, therefore, all the more important. It is important that our societies understand the uniqueness of the Shoah, understand the trauma that results from it into Second and Third Generations, the trauma of having lived through hell and lost so many, and the trauma that many survivors felt and suffered from: “Why me?” “Why not my sister, my mother, my grandfather, my friend?”
With fewer and fewer survivors able to do so, it is all the more valuable that their descendants continue to share their family stories. We saw in Germany how powerful this can be in January when journalist Marcel Reif, who is the son of a survivor, moved the German parliament to tears during the official ceremony to commemorate the victims of National Socialism with a speech about his father. And even though Leon Reif, the father, had decided to never tell his son about the horrors he had lived through, the speech of the son about the late realization of what lay behind that silence was incredibly powerful. As was the advice his father always gave to him in Yiddish: “Sej a mensch. Be human.”
The stories we have heard today from Sue Hurtubise, Agneta Gibson, Richard Heller, and Esther Schwan are so much more than personal memories. They are part of our collective past but also beacons of hope for the future, reminding us that even in the darkest hours, humanity can prevail. It is important to bring these voices to the classroom both in Germany and Canada and I hope we learn from these testimonies how fragile democracy and freedom are, how important it is to cherish them and never be complacent. How important it is to take responsibility for one’s history and learn from it.
Dictators reign from fear and oppression, but also by collaboration of so-called ordinary citizens. As German President Frank Walter Steinmeier once said in a speech, and I quote him freely, “Democracy is never completed, never guaranteed for all eternity. It must be defended against those who threaten it or show contempt for it. And this begins with being very clear-eyed about the rhetoric that despisers of democracy use.
* Samidoun has officially been designated a terrorist group in the U.S. and Canada.