In addition to the German Bundestag, flags are flown to staff, and inside, wreaths were placed on the speaker’s desk. Many members of Parliament are dressed in black, as are many guests. Dignitaries give speeches, which are won through devout applause.
Every year since 1996, this is how the victims of the Nazis were stored in the Bundestag on January 27, a date of foreign renown under the call of Holocaust reminiscence. The day marks the anniversary of the launch of the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camps, and the commemoration is at the heart of Germany’s “culture of reminiscence. “
There are more than three hundred commemorative sites and Nazi documentation centers in Germany. Schoolchildren will be informed of National Socialism in history lessons. Some of them also ancient concentration camps, where commemorative monuments teach them the atrocities committed through the Nazis.
As a nation, Germany experienced large-scale war crimes trials, such as the Auschwitz trials. German companies have traced their own historical involvement in Nazi crimes. Even to this day, elderly wardens of Nazi killing centers are still on trial.
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 pointed like that political opponents, homosexuals and disabled people.
“The culture of memory is collective wisdom, and a memory 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 national socialism. ” Other issues have more and more vital in recent years, such as the postwar dictatorship of Eastern Germany and Germany’s role as colonial power.
Other young people might think that Germany has cultivated a culture of memory. However, the attorney general who brought Auschwitz crook in Frankfurt before the wonderful resistance, Fritz Bauer, is considered to have said in the 1960s: “The enemy territory begins when I leave my office. ” Bauer was Jewish. He only survived the Nazi era as he fled from Sweden.
Holocaust Remembrance Day for the victims of National Socialism was only instituted in Germany in 1996. It has never been designated a public holiday.
The commemoration of Nazi crimes has been directed at hostility, specifically through the far right and right-wing populists in Germany. Jens-Christian Wagner, director of Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorial, a former Nazi concentration camp near Weimar, took a transparent position opposing Germany’s (AFD) election in Thuringia. In the past, Wagner has accused the party of containing elements from afar, and wrote in X that it won threats.
“Almost every memorial site faces vandalism and Holocaust denial. But you also see the debate intensifying locally,” said Veronika Hager of the Souvenir, Duty and The Long Run (EVZ) Foundation, whose project is to maintain the reminiscence of living nationalist persecution alive alive. “Statements that we would have rejected 10 years ago as excessive in society as a whole are now much more popular. “
The 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 is basically. ” This is aligned with the past statements made through AFD colleagues, such as former chef Alexander Gauland, who played in the Nazi era as a “poison of birds undeniable 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 the many new studies that for years have drawn attention to the expansion of anti -Semitism and racism. He is very critical of the existing “culture of memory. “
“If we had done our task, this shameless and brutal hatred towards the Jews would be unbridled,” he said in an interview with the German news Mag 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 confront the dead Jews, our duty will have to remain with the living Jews. And life in Germany is not smart for them,” he said.
In years, the number of incidents and attacks attributed as anti-Semitic has been highest in Germany. To some, this shows that this nation’s “culture of remembrance” has failed.
The culture of the country’s memory and the coverage of Jewish life are noticed as intrinsically linked: classes beyond have the intention of producing daily works today. expects the culture of memory to produce anything that cannot.
“A culture of remembrance is not the same as preventing and combating anti-Semitism,” Wilson said. Codes and conspiracy theories in society.
“On the other hand, we will have to realize that our concepts of preventing anti -Semitism have failed partly,” he said.
Many facets of the culture of German reminiscence have been discussed and debated through historians and in the media, for example, some challenge the uniqueness of Nazi crimes. The Bloodbath of Hamas on October 7, 2023, and the war that followed Gaza, with his tens of thousands of deaths, represents the schism, and revealed a fracture in German society.
For example, the word “never being now” can radically have other meanings in Germany today. The slogan was used regularly to explain the feeling that Nazis crimes will never have to take place again, and many other people interpret it as an explanation of solidarity with Jews and Israel. However, this same slogan has also been shouted in solidarity with the Palestinians in pro-palestinian manifestations since the war in Gaza began more than 15 months.
Since the annotated speech of former Foreign Minister Angela Merkel before the Israeli Parliament in 2008, when he said that Israel’s security was “a state explanation why for Germany”, help for Israel has been a component of the duty of Germany: component of his memory culture. For some in Germany in Germany in Germany in Germany. This means that its memory culture is not inclusive and is not designed for the Combined Immigrants Society today. But the journalist Chema does not agree.
“I would not say that it was not designed for this. Because civil society itself shapes a culture of memory,” he said. However, in general from Germany to Israel in the Gaza War, which justified with its own history, was strongly criticized, “even through many young immigrants. ” Cheema said they were asking consultations such as: “Why are Palestinians now?” In fact, “this is not a bad consultation to ask,” he added.
She believes the slogan, “Free Palestine from German guilt!”, often chanted at protests, is primarily a political message and not an attack on the culture of remembrance. The Research and Information Center on Antisemitism 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 from the EVZ Foundation suggests one way to move forward.
“There are so many things we can specifically examine in our daily environment. For instance, company trainees could review their own firm’s activities during the Nazi era, or one could find out which residents in specific houses were murdered. Such activities could be undertaken with young people, whether they have an international background, or not,” she said.
What is little discussed in Germany are the biographies of the authors of his own family. The journalist Friedman, who is Jewish, once said, “You know, there are millions of fresh witnesses!Look what your grandparents have done, super dye and dye!”
Possibly it would be the next step to emerge the culture of German reminiscence. “I never need to get to the point where we say:” So now we have the best culture of reminiscence, “and I put a payment to the side,” said Hager. “For me, it is anything discursive that moves and develops. “
This article was first written in German.