German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in the Bundestag warned against instrumentalizing the history of Nazi crimes, turning it into “weapons”.
Steinmeier and his Israeli counterpart Reuven Rivlin took part on Wednesday in a “memory hour” in the German Bundestag, dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp (Auschwitz) by the Red Army in Nazi-occupied Poland.
“We must resist the instrumentalization of memory. History must not be written under the whip of politics. This requires freedom and open exchange among historians. History should not become a weapon”, – Steinmeier said, adding that he was concerned that “we understand the past better than the present.
According to Steinmeier, “the evil spirits of the past are showing off new clothes today”, presenting “authoritarian thinking as a new vision”. Therefore, “it is now, 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, that we do not forget what happened, but also what can happen”, – the president said.
“We must now find new forms of memory for the young generation who are wondering what the past has in common with me, with my life. We must give new answers to young Germans whose parents and grandparents came to us from other countries. “You have your own history and we have our own,” the president said, adding that lessons from the history of World War II should be learned by “all Germans”, because “we are all responsible”.
Auschwitz-Birkenau (in the Polish town of Auschwitz) was the largest and longest surviving Nazi concentration camp, so it became one of the main symbols of the Holocaust. About 1.4 million people, of whom about 1.1 million were Jews, died in Auschwitz between 1941 and 1945. The camp was liberated on January 27, 1945 by the Red Army troops. In 1947, a museum was established on the site of the former Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 1979 it was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. In 2005, the UN General Assembly established 27 January as the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.