Speech by Dr

Address,

In purely scientific terms, the concentration camp at Buchenwald is not categorised as an extermination camp. This may be true when we examine the facts and figures we have today. However, such methodical categorisation can tell us nothing about the experience of the people who had to suffer through the hell that was Buchenwald. The brutal exploitation of the prisoners, the systematic, torturous destruction of human beings, including their senseless murder, was a form of extermination that needed no gas chambers. And those who survived, after the experience of the Buchenwald camp, had been psychologically exterminated, and injured to the very core of their humanity.

Apart from the topographical location, the place where the Buchenwald concentration camp once stood bears no similarity to the reality of that time either, nor does it give us any indication of the experiences of the children, women and men who were there. What we see here is in the eyes of the survivors at best the backdrop to the camp as it was in those days. Ernst Cramer, a survivor of Buchenwald, described the site of the camp as being “clean and tidy, (…) almost smart” when he revisited it for the first time in 1990. “But in the assembly yard, everything came back to me as soon as I closed my eyes”. This is how he described his feelings recently to the state parliament of Thuringia. “I smelt the dirt and the cold sweat of the men around me. I felt the drizzling rain and the beating an SS man gave me around my shorn head with a wooden plank. And I heard those around me moaning in pain and the rasping, mocking orders of the guards, all of them in black uniform”. For many other survivors of Buchenwald it was unthinkable to confront their experiences as directly as Ernst Cramer did. My father was one of these survivors. Until the end of his days, there was no question of him revisiting the former site of the camp. The fear, and even panic, of recalling carefully suppressed memories was too great.

Address,

Buchenwald concentration camp no longer exists. But for all time, the soil of this site will be soaked with the tears of the desperate and the blood of those murdered here. Long before the liberation of the camp, this site was a place of mourning and the last, despised resting place of nameless victims. Today it is a place that helps us form in our minds a vague idea of the incomprehensible. Nowhere is a more realistic confrontation with the events of the time possible than at the places of terror and extermination themselves. In Buchenwald we would like to thank the International Committee Buchenwald-Dora and Kommandos for their decades of commitment, the staff at the Buchenwald Memorial Site for their hard work and dedication, but also the state of Thuringia and the Federal Government for the support they have given. All those who in the past 60 years have worked to preserve the site of the former concentration camp for future generations have primarily done this based on one conviction: anyone who comes to this place with an honest wish to form some idea of what happened to the people who were tortured, humiliated and murdered here, will at the decisive moment hopefully be reminded of the warning cry “never again” and will not join the ranks of those who turn a blind eye or look away. This hope is certainly justified and underlines the tremendous significance of the memorial sites – particularly from a socio-political perspective. And this significance is something no simple monument can ever achieve.

Address,

Since right-wing-extremist parties have gained or regained seats in the parliaments of Saxony and Brandenburg, not a week goes by without the right-wing-extremists managing to become the focus of political discussion in Germany. What they are saying is nothing new: open racism and anti-Semitism are complemented by firing up people’s weariness of the political parties. Falsifying history, i.e. playing down the Nazi period and relativising the guilt of war, mobilising prejudices and populist slogans are also regular features of their speeches and pamphlets. All of these things are deeply repulsive and reprehensible – but nothing new. What is new is the public persona of their leaders and their efforts to present themselves as being ordinary citizens and an established part of civil society. What is new and extremely dangerous is the shift of right-wing extremists to the centre of society. We cannot but be alarmed at their aim to become a normal, everyday part of political and social culture in Germany. This is also true of their efforts, not to be underestimated, to exploit people’s widespread fear of falling down the social ladder, in order to increase their number of followers and to unify the right-wing camp by the time the Federal elections take place in 2006.

Closely linked to this is another, no less worrying development: the mentality of children and young people is becoming ever more brutal, accompanied by an increasing propensity for violence. This tendency is also reflected in the fact that the right-wing scene has no problems recruiting young people. In Brandenburg alone the proportion of first offenders committing violent offences is more than 80 percent. Right-wing-extremist leaders are therefore still able to win over young people, often minors, to their cause. This fact should be much greater cause for concern than the scandalous speeches and appearances of NPD representatives. Many of these young people are no longer simply in danger, they can also no longer be reached by the normally available forms of educational influence. Before our very eyes, young people are growing up to be political criminals.

Address,

As justified as worries about the young generation certainly are, at the same time it is just as important to place more focus on adults. Because, let us be honest here: how many adults are knowledgeable enough to talk to their children about the violent crimes of their ancestors during the Second World War? How willing are they to pass on the lessons learned from the past to their children? I would dare to say that if parents were to take part in something similar to the PISA study and were asked about NS history and the Holocaust, the results would be pretty depressing. The willingness to despise people of different skin colour, of another faith, of different nationality or of homosexual orientation and to use them as scapegoats is demonstrated to children by more than a few adults and frequently even by their own family. Schools and youth organisations cannot compensate for what was neglected in those important formative years at home.

The fact that right-wing extremism is a greater problem in the former East German states than in those in the West is undoubtedly the dramatic long-term effect of a form of anti-fascism that was dictated over decades by the government of the GDR. But this is only one of many explanations. We must be clear on the fact that state-controlled thinking, schoolbooks that do not tell the whole story, or insufficiently trained teachers cannot be used as an excuse to justify racism and right-wing violence. Children who have been taught values such as charity, tolerance and humanity will not become right-wing criminals – no matter what political system they have grown up in.

Address,

On this, the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps, what worries me is that the “baton of memory” will no longer be passed on when the eyewitnesses of times past are no longer among us. But it is only by passing on these memories to the following generations that we can ensure that the suffering of all the murdered victims and survivors of the catastrophe of war was not in vain. This realisation must motivate us to preserve the memory in the way the survivors would have wished, by passing on the witnesses’ stories to the descendents of the victims and perpetrators. The Buchenwald Report, which contains reports of survivors who put to paper their traumatic experiences just after liberation, is one of the most valuable eyewitness accounts in existence. Anyone who reads these or other descriptions by survivors of the Second World War, automatically becomes a witness to the events. In all humility and sorrow for the fate of the dead and in thanks for the great efforts of the survivors to report on their experiences, I call upon all well-meaning people to also accept responsibility as representative witnesses. Pass on to others what you have read about persecution, war and the state-ordered murder of millions of innocent people! Bear witness to what those who were there have told you, either directly or through the media! Try to describe to young people what you felt when you visited a former concentration camp! Commit the name of one single victim to memory and take on the responsibility of passing on his or her story to ensure it is not forgotten. Accept the baton of memory!