In addition to the German Bundestag, the flags fly to the staff, and inside, the crowns were placed on the speaker desk. Many members of the Parliament are dressed in black, just like many guests. The dignitaries say speeches, which are won through devout applause.
Every year since 1996, this is how the Nazis’ victims have been memorialized at the Bundestag on January 27 — a date internationally known as Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day marks the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camps, and the commemoration is central to Germany’s “culture of remembrance.”
There are more than 300 memorial sites and Nazi documentation centers across Germany. Schoolchildren learn about National Socialism in history lessons. Some of them also visit former concentration camps, where memorials teach them about the atrocities committed by the Nazis.
As a nation, Germany has experienced trials for war crimes, such as Auschwitz’s judgments. German corporations have returned on their own ancient participation in Nazi crimes. Even to date, the major guards of the Nazis kill centers are still judged.
The day of the Holocaust memory is a darker bankruptcy reminder of German history. Nazi Germany caused World War II, with its many millions of deaths, and was guilty of the systematic homicide of 6 million European Jews, as well as a lot of thousands of other victims of Nazi horror: Schi and Rome were attacked as well that political opponents such as political, homosexual opponents and disabled people.
“The culture of reminiscence is a collective wisdom, and a reminiscence of the past,” said Saba -nur Chema, political scientist and journalist. “In the case of Germany, the reminiscence of the Holocaust is central, as well as an examination of nationalism. ” Other issues have more and more vital in recent years, such as the postwar dictatorship of East of Germany and the role of Germany as a colonial power.
Young people might think that Germany always cultivated a culture of remembrance. However, the attorney general who brought the criminal acts in Auschwitz to trial in Frankfurt in the face of great resistance, Fritz Bauer, is reputed to have said in the 1960s: “Enemy territory begins when I leave my office.” Bauer was Jewish. He only survived the Nazi era by fleeing to Sweden.
On the day of the Holocaust memory for national socialism patients, it was only established in Germany in 1996. It has never been designated as a holiday.
The commemoration of Nazi crimes has often been targeted with hostility — especially by the extreme right and right-wing populists in Germany. Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorial, a former Nazi concentration camp near Weimar, has taken a clear stance against the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Thuringia. In the past, Wagner has accused the party of containing far-right elements — and has written on X that he has received threats.
“Almost all commemorative sites face vandalism and the denial of the Holocaust. But you also see the debate that intensifies locally,” said Veronika Hager, of the foundation of Souvenir, Duty and The Long Run (Evz), whose project is Maintain the maintenance of the reminiscence of the national socialist persecution LIVA VIVA. “The statements that we would have rejected 10 years ago as excessive in society as total are now much more popular. “
AFD coefficient Alice Weidel did the following during a television interview: “There is no doubt that Adolf Hitler was an anti-Semitic socialist, and anti-Semitism basically stays. “This is in line with past statements made through AFD colleagues, such as former chef Alexander Gauland, who played into the Nazi era as an “undeniable bird poop in history”.
“The goal is to soften up the situation, so that we end up not even talking about what happened. The danger is that the threat posed by right-wing nationalist groups could then become intangible and no longer concrete,” said Cheema.
Michel Friedman is one of many newshounds who have for years drawn attention to the expansion of anti-Semitism and racism. He is very critical of the existing “culture of remembrance”.
“If we had done our homework, this shameless and brutal hatred of Jews would be rampant,” he said in an interview with German news magazine der Spiegel.
For him, as well as for Jewish organizations and associations in Germany, the “culture of remembrance” is too ritualized, too anchored in the past.
“As vital as it is to face dead Jews, our duty will have to remain with living Jews. And life in Germany is not intelligent for them,” he said.
In years, the number of incidents and attacks attributed as anti -Semites has higher in Germany. For some, this shows that the “culture of memory” of this nation has failed.
The country’s culture of remembrance and the protection of Jewish life are often considered intrinsically linked: lessons from the past are meant to produce responsibility today. However, Joseph Wilson, an antisemitism expert at the EVZ Foundation, said such an assumption expects the culture of remembrance to produce something it cannot.
“A culture of reminiscence is not the same as prevention and combat opposite to anti -Semitism,” Wilson said. The compassion that can be felt when visiting a commemorative site does not translate to the existing one, and that does not lead other people to recognize anti -Semitic codes and conspiracy theories in society.
“Instead, we have to realize that our antisemitism prevention concepts have failed in parts,” he said.
Many facets of the culture of German reminiscence have been discussed and debated through historians and the media, and some question the uniqueness of Nazi crimes, for example. Hamas’s blood bath of October 7, 2023 And the war that followed in Gaza, with their tens of thousands of deaths, represents a schism and revealed a fracture in German society.
For example, the phrase “Never again is now” can have radically differently meanings in Germany today. The slogan was generally used to express the sentiment that the Nazi crimes must never happen again, and many people interpret it as an expression of solidarity with Jews and Israel. However, that same slogan has also been shouted in solidarity with Palestinians at pro-Palestinian demonstrations since the war in Gaza began more than 15 months.
Since former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s noted speech to the Israeli parliament in 2008, when she said that Israel’s security was “a state explanation for why for Germany,” aid to Israel has been a component of Germany’s duty: a component of its culture of remembrance. For some in Germany in Germany in Germany in Germany in Germany. , this means that their culture of remembrance is not inclusive and is not designed for today’s blended immigrant society. But journalist Cheema disagrees.
“I would not say that it was not designed for this. Because civil society itself gives to a culture of memory,” he said. However, Germany’s whole towards Israel at the beginning of the Gaza War, which justified with its own history, was harshly criticized, “even through many young immigrants. ” The Palestinians are in this way now? “In fact,” it’s not a bad question, “he added.
She believes that the slogan, “Palestine Releases German Guilt!”, often sung in opposition to demonstrations, is basically a political message and not an attack on the culture of memory. The Center for Research and Information on Anti-Semitism in Berlin, on the other hand, assessed the slogan in a report as a “desire to draw a line under the Nazi past. “
Discussions like these are perhaps a sign that there are many “cultures of remembrance” in Germany — not just one.
Veronika Hager of the Evz Foundation suggests a striker.
“There are so many things we can read about in particular in our environment. For example, the company’s interns may read about the activities of their own businesses in the Nazi era, or we may notice which citizens of the Express Houses have been killed.
What’s generally little discussed in Germany are the biographies of perpetrators in one’s own family. Journalist Friedman, who is Jewish, once said, “You know, there are millions of contemporary witnesses! Look what your grandparents, great-aunts and great-uncles did!”
That could perhaps be the next step in the development of Germany’s culture of remembrance. “I don’t ever want to get to the point where we say: ‘So, now we have the perfect culture of remembrance,’ and put a check mark beside it,” said Hager. “For me, it’s always something discursive that moves and develops.”
This article was first written in German.