In a moving address, historian and Holocaust survivor Saul Friedländer said anti-Semitism was a "scourge" circulating through both the far-right and far-left. He also warned against growing nationalism.
Image: Reuters/H. Hanschke
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Israeli historian and Holocaust survivor Saul Friedländer delivered a moving and personal speech to the German parliament on Thursday as the Bundestag observed its annual memorial session to the victims of National Socialism. Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier were among the leading politicians and dignitaries present in the packed chamber.
Delivering his speech in German, the language he spoke growing up in 1930s Prague, the 86-year-old Friedländer recounted his family's flight to France, their successful attempt to hide him in a Catholic boarding school and his last encounter with his parents, who had tried to hide in a hospital.
"I ran away from the school, and found my parents in the hospital," he told the chamber. "They had to send me back. What must they have been feeling, as they watched their little boy fighting for all he was worth because he wanted to stay with them, as he was taken from the room? It was our last encounter."
Friedländer's parents were caught by Swiss police as they attempted to cross the border in 1942, when he was 9 years old, and deported to Auschwitz by the Nazis on "Transport Nr. 40," he said.
Friedländer was escorted into the parliament by Steinmeier (center) and MerkelImage: picture-alliance/dpa/K. Nietfeld
"I often ask myself whether my parents were together during the three days of this hellish journey," he said. "And if they were, what did they say to each other? And what did they think? Did they know what was awaiting them?"
Friedländer's father, being sick, was likely gassed on arrival, with 638 others from his train, while his mother may have survived three more months working as a slave. Of the thousand people on Transport 40, which included 200 children, four survived the war.
Friedländer converted to Catholicism while in hiding, before moving to Israel in 1948, five weeks after the state's foundation. He went on to become one of the world's preeminent historians of the Holocaust, his work culminating in a two-volume history, entitled Nazi Germany and the Jews, and The Years of Extermination, published in 1997 and 2007.
Friedländer also used his speech to warn against the resurgence of anti-Semitism at a time when right- and left-wing extremists are questioning Israel's right to exist.
All the party leaders and cabinet ministers were present in the Bundestag Image: picture-alliance/dpa/W. Kumm
"Today's hatred against Jews is just as irrational as it always was, and new and old conspiracy theories are in circulation again, especially among far-right extremists," he said. "While among the anti-Semitic left the politically-correct type of justification for their hate consists of obsessively attacking Israeli politics while questioning Israel's right to exist."
"Of course it is legitimate to criticize the Israeli government, but the sheer intensity and extent of the attacks are simply absurd," he said.
Friedländer also offered other warnings to his audience, which included members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), and US Ambassador Richard Grenell, whose President Donald Trump declared himself a nationalist at a rally in Texas last October.
"Anti-Semitism is just one of the scourges that is afflicting one nation after another," said Friedländer, to applause. "Xenophobia, the temptation of authoritarian leadership practices, and especially the intensifying nationalism that is on the march around the world in a worrying way."
The German parliament traditionally marks Holocaust Remembrance Day, which falls on January 27, with a special parliamentary session. This year the speeches were punctuated by music from the Bennewitz string quartet, who played pieces by composers Erwin Schulhoff and Viktor Ullmann, who both died in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
In his opening remarks, Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble said that respect for the dignity of every person was one of the essential lessons learned following the persecution by the Nazi regime. He added that Germany's constitution, which begins by stating that "human dignity shall be inviolable," is one of the answers to the Holocaust.
Schäuble noted that it was "shameful" that Jewish people living in Germany are reporting more anti-Semitic incidents and that more and more of them have expressed a wish to leave the country.
This year marks the 74th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Army on January 27, 1945.
'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27. Numerous memorials across Germany ensure the millions of victims are not forgotten.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Schreiber
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Wannsee House
The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in the planning of the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to devise what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated 60 years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.
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Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals
Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The 4-meter high (13-foot) monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.
Image: picture alliance/Markus C. Hurek
Documentation center on Nazi Party rally grounds
Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of World War II. The annual Nazi Party congress, as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants, took place on the 11-square-kilometer (4.25-square-mile) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.
Image: picture-alliance/Daniel Karmann
German Resistance Memorial Center
The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it's the German Resistance Memorial Center.
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Bergen-Belsen Memorial
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, and many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 people killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame after her diary was published posthumously.
Image: picture alliance/Klaus Nowottnick
Buchenwald Memorial
Located near the Thuringian town of Weimar, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe to the camp and murdered 64,000 of them before the camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945. The site now serves as a memorial to the victims.
Image: Getty Images/J. Schlueter
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims
Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool, the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani. "Gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears," it reads.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
'Stolpersteine' — stumbling blocks as memorials
In the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig began the project to confront Germany's Nazi past. The brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former homes of Nazi victims show their names, details about their deportation, and murder, if known. As of early 2022, some 100,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in over 25 countries across Europe. It's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Brown House in Munich
Right next to the "Führerbau," where Adolf Hitler had his office in Munich, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party, called the Brown House. A white cube now occupies the place where it once stood. In it, the "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.
