Germany's commemoration rituals have changed since 1945. Will they still make sense in the future? DW's Felix Steiner thinks that the passing of time since the Holocaust and social change are forcing a rethink.
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Image: picture-alliance/ZUMAPRESS.com
Bild, Germany's most widely read newspaper, is not popular with an intellectual and well-read readership, to say the least — which makes it all the more remarkable that this media company is running the 2018 social media campaign for the World Jewish Congress on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The #WeRemember campaign invites people from all over the world to upload photos of themselves. The pictures will be projected onto a large screen on January 27 at a commemorative event marking the anniversary of the Red Army's liberation of Auschwitz in 1945. The organizers hope that half a million people will take part.
DW's Felix Steiner
#WeRemember is a creative attempt to find new ways of remembering the Jews murdered by the Nazis. The accounts of living witnesses still related in school classrooms will soon be history. When Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the only living member of the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz, addresses the Bundestag next Wednesday, it may be the last time that we witness such a gripping appearance.
And then what happens? Will future historians merely give speeches and go through the motions of the current rituals? That would be disastrous: Such a culture of remembrance would be repulsive and would probably achieve the opposite of what it is intended.
Some people may hope for just that. "No more German guilt cult" has become a popular rallying cry in some social media circles. It no longer matters that three years ago Joachim Gauck, then the country's president, declared that there is "no German identity without Auschwitz." This is by no means accepted everyone who lives here.
'Matter for all'
Jewish cemeteries in Germany have always been desecrated, swastikas have been drawn on walls, and "Du Jude" ("You Jew") is still used as an insult in schoolyards. Furthermore, many synagogues need permanent police protection. Not everyone seems to have learned the idea of "never again" as a basic lesson.
Some of the anti-Semitism is expressed by immigrants from Islamic cultures. But Germany has set high goals with regard to this group. "Remembrance of the Holocaust remains a matter for all citizens living in Germany," Gauck had said on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
The permanent places of remembrance are becoming increasingly important. Be it the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin (not a "monument of shame," but a "monument of shameful deeds"), the thousands of "stumbling blocks" — brass plates set into sidewalks and inscribed with the name, date of birth and date of death of a person persecuted by the Nazi regime — in front of the houses where Jews lived, or the historic sites of concentration and extermination camps.
Mandatory school visits to concentration camps, one recent proposal, may have a lasting moving effect on young people. But it is certainly not a panacea for immunizing future generations against anti-Semitism. On the contrary, much more complex strategies are needed.
In the long run, the raison d'etre for Germany's culture of remembrance in its present form will cease to exist. This is also a message 73 years after the liberation of Auschwitz.
'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.
