Austria apologizes for Nazi crimes

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer apologized on behalf of the Austrian Republic to Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid for the crimes committed at the Nazis’ Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

Lapid, whose grandfather Bela Lampel perished in Mauthausen, attended the commemoration ceremony to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“I apologize on behalf of the Republic of Austria for the crimes committed here. I apologize that your grandfather was murdered here,” Nehammer said during his speech.

Speaking at the ceremony, Lapid recounted the story of his grandfather, who was picked up by the SS from his home in March 1944 in presence of his wife and Lapid’s father, Tommy Lapid, and never returned.

“When he arrived here, he was no longer a dad, he was no longer a person. He was a number,” Lapid said. “I came here today to remind the world that Bela Lampel was not a number. He was my grandfather. He loved his beautiful wife. He went to football matches with his child. He loved to have an omelet at the coffee shop next to his home.”

According to the records at Mauthausen, Lampel died in April 1945, just a few weeks before Nazi Germany surrendered.

“That was the last significant thing the Nazis did — killing my grandfather,” Lapid stated. “But dying was not the last significant thing that he did. Because my grandfather did one other thing, even if he did it after his death: Grandpa Bela, a quiet man whose family nickname was ‘Bela the Wise,’ sent me here today to say on his behalf, that the Jews have not surrendered. They’ve established a strong, free, and proud Jewish state, and they sent his grandson, to represent them here today.”

“The Nazis thought they were the future, and that Jews would be something you only find in a museum. Instead, the Jewish state is the future, and Mauthausen is a museum,” he continued.

“Rest in peace, grandfather, you won.”

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