Angela Merkel: ‘Zero tolerance’ of anti-Semitism in Germany

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday stressed that it was every individual’s responsibility to show “zero tolerance” of xenophobia and all forms of anti-Semitism.

“People growing up today must know what people were capable of in the past, and we must work proactively to ensure that it is never repeated,” Merkel said in her weekly video address ahead of Sunday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Between 1933 and 1945, millions of people across Europe, including an estimated 6 million Jews, were murdered and persecuted by the Nazis.

Read more: Holocaust Remembrance Day: It’s not about guilt, but about responsibility

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of terror

  Wannsee House

  The villa on Berlin’s Wannsee lake was pivotal in planning the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to plan what became known as the “Final Solution,” the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of terror

  Dachau

  The Nazi regime opened the first concentration camp in Dauchau, not far from Munich. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power it was used by the paramilitary SS “Schutzstaffel” to imprison, torture and kill political opponents to the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of terror

  Nazi party rally grounds

  Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of the Second World War. The annual Nazi party congress as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants took place on the 11-km² (4.25 square miles) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of terror

  Bergen-Belsen

  The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, so many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame posthumously after her diary was published.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of terror

  Buchenwald Memorial

  Buchenwald near the Thuringian town of Weimar was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe here and murdered 64,000 of them.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of terror

  Memorial to the German Resistance

  The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler that failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, which is today the German Resistance Memorial Center.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of terror

  Hadamar Euthanasia Center

  From 1941 people with physical and mental disabilities were killed at a psychiatric hospital in Hadamar in Hesse. Declared “undesirables” by the Nazis, some 15,000 people were murdered here by asphyxiation with carbon monoxide or by being injected with lethal drug overdoses. Across Germany some 70,000 were killed as part of the Nazi euthanasia program. Today Hadamar is a memorial to those victims.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of terror

  Holocaust Memorial

  Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated sixty years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground “Place of Information” holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of terror

  Memorial to persecuted homosexuals

  Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The four-meter high monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin’s Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of terror

  Sinti and Roma Memorial

  Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool the poem “Auschwitz” by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani: “gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears.”

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of terror

  ‘Stolpersteine’ – stumbling blocks as memorials

  In the 1990s, the artist Gunther Demnig began a project to confront Germany’s Nazi past. Brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former houses of Nazi victims, provide details about the people and their date of deportation and death, if known. More than 45,000 “Stolpersteine” have been laid in 18 countries in Europe – it’s the world’s largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.

• ‘Never Again’: Memorials of terror

  Brown House in Munich

  Right next to the “Führerbau” where Adolf Hitler had his office, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party in Germany, in the “Brown House” in Munich. A white cube now occupies its former location. A new “Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism” opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the liberation from the Nazi regime, uncovering further dark chapters of history.

  Author: Max Zander, Ille Simon

Rising hatred

The German chancellor warned that racism was still very much alive in society today, with “a very different kind of anti-Semitism” emerging among Germans as well as Muslim migrants.

The recent rise in attacks against Jews prompted the government last year to appoint a commissioner against anti-Semitism and set up a national registration office to document anti-Semitic hate crimes.

Charlotte Knobloch, a former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the Passauer Neue Presse on Saturday that hatred against Jews in Germany was increasing, with many facing a “pogrom atmosphere” on social media.

“We have to nip this in the bud,” she said, urging social and political institutions to stage an “outcry” against shows of anti-Semitism.

Read more: Holocaust Remembrance Day: Places of memory and mourning

The director of the memorial at Buchenwald, the largest Nazi concentration camp on German soil, this week barred the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party from attending a commemoration for the 56,000 people killed there during the Holocaust.

Memorial director Volkhard Knigge said the decision was a response to anti-democratic, racist and anti-Semitic tendencies in the party.

Telling victims’ stories

In her speech, Merkel also said it was important to find new ways for younger generations to commemorate Holocaust victims. 

“It will be crucial in the coming time to find new ways of remembrance,” she said. “We must look more closely at the personalities of people who were victims back then, and to tell their stories.”

Read more: German teacher fights schoolyard anti-Semitism

International Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the liberation of Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland by the Soviet Army on January 27, 1945.

• Synagogues in Germany

  Rykestrasse Synagogue in Berlin

  The Jewish community in Berlin with more than 11,000 members is once again the biggest in Germany. Its main synagogue is on the Rykestrasse, a red-brick building in a Neo-Romanesque style dating from 1903/04. With seating for over 2,000 it is the second largest synagogue in Europe after the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest.

• Synagogues in Germany

  Erfurt Synagogue

  It’s thought to be one of the oldest synagogues still standing in Europe. It was by chance in the year 1100 that the Erfurt Synagogue survived a medieval pogrom as well as repeated phases of persecution. It was converted into a storage hall and later even used as a ballroom, so its true purpose remained hidden until the 1990s. It was eventually restored and re-opened in 2009 as a museum.

• Synagogues in Germany

  Jewish Cemetery ‘Heiliger Sand’ in Worms

  The first settled Jewish communities were established along a north-south passage following the Rhine river between Speyer, Mainz and Worms. The oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in Europe can be found in the synagogue compound in Worms. The tombstones with over 2,000 still legible inscriptions, some dating back to the 11th century, are well worth seeing.

• Synagogues in Germany

  Cologne Synagogue

  Cologne was one of the largest Jewish communities in Germany during the Weimar Republic. In 1933 there were seven synagogues. On November 9, 1938, during the “Reichspogromnacht”, all houses of prayer were destroyed. After the war, the synagogue in Roonstraße was the only one to be rebuilt. Today it is once again a lively centre of Jewish culture in Germany.

• Synagogues in Germany

  The “document” at the Neupfarrplatz in Regensburg

  The first Jewish community in Bavaria was based in Regensburg. In the Middle Ages it was one of the most important in Europe. The first synagogue, which was destroyed in 1519, is today commemorated by a work of art in white stone marking the outline of the synagogue. In 1995, during excavation work, the old remnants were found, leading to the creation of an underground information center.

• Synagogues in Germany

  The Baroque synagogue in Bayreuth

  The synagogue in Bayreuth has a very different history. The building, from 1715, served as an opera house and was only later converted by the Jewish community into a synagogue. Today it is the only surviving Baroque style synagogue in Germany, which is still used today as a place of worship.

• Synagogues in Germany

  Ulm Synagogue

  The Jewish community in Ulm has had a synagogue again since 2012. The former Federal President Gauck also attended the inauguration. He spoke of “a day of joy for all people of good will”. The church, which is oriented towards Jerusalem, is to be the central contact point for Jews in the east of Württemberg and in the Bavarian part of Swabia.

• Synagogues in Germany

  The Great Synagogue of Augsburg

  It is the only synagogue in Bavaria to have survived National Socialism almost unscathed. Opened in 1917, the Art Nouveau building is considered one of the most beautiful prayer houses in Europe. The eye-catcher is the 29 meter high dome, which is decorated with oriental elements. The synagogue also houses the Jewish Cultural Museum, which documents the history of the Jews in Augsburg.

• Synagogues in Germany

  The timber-framed synagogue in Celle

  In this region of Germany Jews were only granted permission to build synagogues in 1737. This simple exterior timber-framed building dates from this period. The opulent Baroque style interior, like so many synagogues in Germany, fell victim to the Nazi “Kristallnacht” pogrom in November 1938. Since 1974, the building has been used once again as a synagogue.

• Synagogues in Germany

  The Westend Synagogue in Frankfurt am Main

  The 20th century rang in an economic boom for Jews in Germany, which, in turn, inspired a more liberal movement within the Jewish community. This synagogue dates from this era and resembles Assyrian–Egyptian architecture. Neither Nazi pogroms, nor the Second World War could fully destroy it. So, to this day, it stands as a testament to the glory days of German-Jewish life.

• Synagogues in Germany

  The Old Synagogue in Essen

  The Old Synagogue in Essen was built between 1911 and 1913. It was one of the largest and most important Jewish centers in pre-war Germany, but was severely damaged by the Nazis in 1938. After the war it served first as a museum for industrial design and later as a place of commemoration and documentation. After elaborate reconstruction work it is now home to the “House of Jewish Culture” museum.

• Synagogues in Germany

  The New Synagogue in Dresden

  The Old Synagogue in Dresden, designed by Gottfried Semper and part of the city’s famous skyline, was destroyed in 1938. More than half a century later, at the same location, this award-winning new building was opened in 2001. Inside the sanctuary, is a cube containing a square worship space, curtained off on all sides, intended to evoke an echo on the scale of the Temple at Jerusalem.

• Synagogues in Germany

  Ohel Jakob Synagogue in Munich

  Munich also set out to mark architecturally a new chapter in German-Jewish history. The Ohel Jakob, or Jacob’s Tent, synagogue was inaugurated in 2006. The building is part of the new Jewish Center consisting of the synagogue, the Jewish Museum of Munich and a community center funded by the city. With its 9,500 members the Jewish community in Munich is one of the biggest in Germany.

  Author: Elisabeth Jahn (sbc), Anne Termèche

nm/jm (Reuters, AP, AFP)

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Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/angela-merkel-zero-tolerance-of-anti-semitism-in-germany/a-47249046