The industrial mass murder of six million Jews, the worst crime in the history of humanity, it was committed by my countrymen. Those who murdered, those who planned and helped in the murdering, the many who silently toed the line: They were Germans. And I bow in deepest sorrow.Īnd this also must be said here: The perpetrators were human beings. I read their names and hear their story and learn about so many other stories, will learn another one in our talk with a Holocaust survivor later today. I, too, stand here today as a human being – and as a German. And as human beings, they live with many others in our memory. They did not succeed to erase the memory of them. Germans tried to dehumanize them, to reduce them to numbers, to erase all memory of them in the extermination camps. Germans burned numbers on their forearms. She wrote: „I regret from the very depth of my soul that, on departing, I did not realise the importance of the moment, (.) that I did not hug you tightly, never releasing from your arms.“ In the bitter cold of January, Ida wrote her last letter to her parents: They were deported from the Chisinau ghetto. Live’s like that of Ida Goldish and her three year-old son Vili. And today we are reminded of their lives – each individual life. Today we are reminded of their sufferings. Today we remember and we mourn the victims of the Shoah. What a blessing, what a gift it is for me to be able to speak to you here today at this beautiful and solemn place - the Legion of Honor. „Blessed be the Lord for enabling me to be here at this day!“ (Prayer from the Book of Baruch) Speech by German Consul General Oliver Schramm at the Legion of Honorĭear colleagues, friends and participants of today’s Remembrance ceremony,
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