German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke at a gathering of the Jewish community in Frankfurt to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis’ largest concentration camp, Auschwitz.
“Jewish life, that is Frankfurt. Jewish life, that is Germany. That is us,” Scholz said in remarks at the commemoration.
In Frankfurt, Scholz said that Germany had a responsibility to uphold the memory of the Holocaust committed by Germans during World War II.
Scholz also underscored the “worrying and alarming normalisation” of antisemitism, hate and the far right, especially on social media.
“The internet and social networks in particular often become a hotbed for extremist positions, incitement and hatred,” Scholz warned.
More than one million people died at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in occupied Poland during World War II. Most of the victims were Jews — over 1 million according to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum — but they also included non-Jewish Poles, Roma and Soviet soldiers.
“I am against turning the page, saying ‘that was long ago’,” Scholz said.
“We keep alive the memory of the civilizational breakdown of the Shoah (Holocaust) committed by Germans, which we pass down to each generation in our country again and again: our responsibility will not end,” he said.
The Holocaust is “millions of individual stories,” people “like you and me.”
“It is also this awareness that we must pass down in our remembrance,” he added.
This collective memory is based on “indisputable facts that everyone in our country must face regardless of origin, family history or religion,” Scholz said.
