President of the Federal Republic of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that Germany knows about its responsibility to history, referring to the events of the Second World War, and this responsibility will never pass.
“We Germans know about our responsibility to history. This is a responsibility that will never pass. This is a responsibility for our common future,” Steinmeier said at a ceremony honoring the victims of the 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy.
According to him, the Holocaust did not start with the German death factories in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, or Majdanek. “It began earlier, with an aggressive (Hitler’s) campaign to the east, in the forests, on the outskirts of cities and villages. Over 1 million Jews became victims of the ‘Holocaust from bullets’ in Ukraine,” Steinmeier said.
“I am here today to remind, and we must remind, of what immeasurable hatred, nationalism, anti-Semitism, and racial hatred can lead to. We must remind also because there will be no good future without honest memory,” he said.
For his part, the German President thanked Ukraine for reconciliation and close partnership.
“I feel deep gratitude for the reconciliation, dear Mr. President Zelensky, you are the people of Ukraine and the heirs of the victims of that time for reaching out to us, the Germans (…)I feel gratitude for the close partnership that unites our countries. I feel even greater gratitude for the common foundations that we together profess, namely international law, equality, freedom of peoples in their political self-determination and territorial integrity, a peaceful and secure Europe. We must defend this,” Steinmeier said.
The German president said that he “cannot say the Germans have learned the lessons of history once and for all.”
“It hurts and fills me with anger that anti-Semitism is growing in Germany,” he said.
