Germany's foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel has arrived in Israel, where he joined in events marking Holocaust Remembrance Day. Gabriel is also due to meet with Israeli and Palestinian officials during his trip.
Advertisement
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel layed a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, as his visit to Israel happened to coincide with the country's official Holocaust Remembrance Day. Two minutes' silence were held in Jerusalem while sirens blared out across the city on the day dedicated to commemorating the 6 million Jews systematically killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II.
After his visit to Yad Vashem, Gabriel proceded to the grave of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews by employing them in his factories, located in then-occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
Gabriel has described the now friendly ties between Germany and Israel as "a gift that we can only accept with gratitude and humility in awareness of the break with civilization that was the Shoah," using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust. Gabriel himself has a close relationship with Israel, having traveled there often since his youth.
Warning of violence
Foreign Minister Gabriel arrived in Israel on April 24 chiely to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Nethanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as well as other key officials to discuss the stalled Middle East peace process. Earlier, in the Jordanian capital, Amman, Gabriel warned of the danger of a fresh eruption of violence in the Middle East if the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians was not restarted.
"Waiting too long will open up a new field of play to the terror organizations of this world," he said. "If we neglect this conflict, it could cause a new series of violence in the region of a kind we have not yet seen in the past few years."
He said that the conflict should retake its place at the focus of international politics, with Germany obliged to take an "active role" in resolving the situation.
However, he also highlighted the decisive role played by the United States, whose policy on the issue under the new administration of President Donald Trump still remains unclear.
Gabriel also called on Europe to play a greater role in resolving the long-running civil conflict in Syria, rather than leaving negotiations up to the United States and Russia.
Peace process in tatters
Peace efforts in the region have been stalemated for several years. Former US Secretary of State John Kerry made intensive attempts to advance the so-called "two-state solution," in which the Palestinians would be given their own autonomous state alongside Israel, but talks broke down in 2014.
Some reports suggest that these Israeli actions led to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cancelling a summit with Netanyahu that was due to take place in Jerusalem in May.
'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.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
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.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
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.