The German calendar is filled with bitter-heavy memorial day. There is the 30. January (in 1933, the coming to power of Hitler), 9. November (1938, Kristallnacht) or the 27. January (1945, liberation of Auschwitz). And there is the 8. May (1945), the day of the liberation of Germany.
liberation? 40. Anniversary of the 8. May kept a low profile, the then Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker, of any palliation, a speech, which, in turn, found its way into the history books, because he was the first to officially announced the “liberation” in place of “surrender”. Weizsäcker, could it also be a speaker, and so he established Once and for all the historically correct name.
not Talking about is a matter of luck, but high art
years later, a President of the Bundestag by the name of Philipp Jenni Viking language to 9. November and failed with a crash. The speech was good, it had been incorrectly kept, was Ignatz Bubis later, made a daring joke of it, to quote, in turn, in a speech a few sentences Jenningers, without anyone noticing it.
not to Talk, learned of the policy from these examples, it is about a matter of luck, but a high art. And what time is the claim that the Public is now at an acceptable speech would be higher than in the case of the speech on the Holocaust remembrance day? It is held since 1996 in front of the Bundestag, since 2000, almost exclusively of the Victims of the persecution of the Jews, former camp-detainees, or even Auschwitz Survivors. Including 2014 as an exception to Daniil Granin, a Survivor of another crime, the Starvation of Leningrad in the war.
as a time witness has proven itself as a tried and tested means to take the high hurdle of reasonable commemorative speech. So also in this time. On Thursday, Saul Friedländer speech before the Bundestag, and he used two-thirds of his speech on personal memories – he survived as a child under a false identity in the occupied France, while his parents were deported to the murder.
Friedlander is not only an eye-witness, he is one of the great historians of the 20th century. Century and the research on the murder of Jews. He belongs to the last age group that can speak from their own Experience from the genocide, and in all its terrible facets. The majority of the previous Parliament, the Bundestag, memorial speakers no longer alive. You were already old when they spoke, and shared their memories as a legacy.
The time is missing. However, one can also say that it was comfortable and to let witnesses speak; for what they report are facts certified by the own fate. Posterity may occur with such authority. The Historization of the Nazi crimes, is progressing unceasingly, because the past vanishes and the memory shrinks to a mere commemorative days.
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Bundestag of the NS commemorates victims of Holocaust Survivor Friedlander calls for democracy
Claudia salts
conversely, grows the duty to the present and their hazards. Friedländer has already done that, he has castigated the current anti-Semitism of the right and left. The judgment about the past is spoken of, it is to repeat idle. The task of future speakers is to set an example for the Here and now.
