Speech by Bertrand Herz on 10 April 2005 at the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar on the Occasion of the National Commemoration of the

Sixty years after the liberation of the concentration camps, we, the survivors of the atrocities of the Nazi regime, are gratified that our suffering and our struggle, and the suffering and struggles of our comrades who fell prey to barbarity, and whom we now bow before in our thoughts, are today being officially honoured by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Free State of Thuringia. Among those who survived is a certain fifteen-year-old French youth, who on 11 April 1945 wandered exhausted and bewildered through the Buchenwald camp, whose father and mother met their death at the hand of the Nazis, and who sixty years later on this occasion would like to greet, deeply moved, the representatives of a democratic and friendly Germany.

We undoubtedly owe this encounter to those who, after the horrific experiences of the Second World War, sought for reconciliation between the nations of Europe. Nonetheless, the Europe that came forth out of the ruins of the terrible Nazi regime will not be able to survive if this past should be forgotten. Forgetting means not wanting to comprehend how easily ideologies oriented toward aggression, toward the annihilation of races deemed inferior, and toward disdain for individual conscience were able to emerge and threaten to destroy our entire civilization. Forgetting means not wanting to acknowledge that war and the violation of human dignity in our times could make the unspeakable possible once again. Out of the complete and unreserved analysis of the tragic Nazi past, young people must derive vital lessons for their future as citizens of a free and peaceful Europe.

We would like to impress upon all young people the urgency of fighting any and every form of exclusion based on nationality, origin, religion, etc., each and every day of their lives. Let us be on our guard: exclusion begins with ridicule, then come insults, then punches, and finally, in an atmosphere of apathy and indifference, it can lead to murder and even to extermination. No, a young person must never tolerate such things. No, because every comrade is a brother (or a sister), and the young people in the countries under Nazi occupation understood this when, despite all dangers, they proudly wore the Star of David as a sign of solidarity with their humiliated comrades.

We would also like to urge young people to stand up for democracy and to think of those who at their age dared to say “no” to Nazism. Just like the French women who sang the Marseillaise as they arrived at Auschwitz, and of whom few ever returned. Just like the Soviet prisoners who, like their comrades from other nations, sabotaged armaments in Dora and were hanged for it. And, finally, just like those German anti-fascist resistance fighters who were already battling against Nazism in 1933. It was their courage that made the armed resistance by all nations in Buchenwald possible that broke out on 11 April 1945, just before American troops arrived, managing, through the International Underground Committee, to liberate the camp.

In memory of this struggle and because you, today’s youth, must remain vigilant in the face of the tragic times our world is currently experiencing, we urge you to renew the oath of 19 April 1945, in which the freed prisoners solemnly vowed to create a peaceful world – something we are today, sixty years later, still very far from realising.

You, the youth of today, are not only the keepers of our legacy, you also represent our hopes that you will be able to bring about the peaceful world that we once wished for so fervently – when, on construction sites, in tunnels, in command headquarters, in the cold, in the stench of the latrines of the small camp, we struck up the song of the "Peat Bog Soldiers", expressing our dreams of a life in freedom and in the circle of our loved ones.