holocaust
Contemporary witnesses: Holocaust survivors with Lapid in Berlin
Holocaust survivor Schoschana Trister (l) traveled to Berlin with Israel’s Prime Minister Jair Lapid. photo
© Annegret Hilse/Reuters/Pool/dpa
“We will never forget,” said Israel’s new Prime Minister Lapid in Berlin, referring to the Holocaust. He brought eyewitnesses with him – but they are becoming fewer and fewer.
It’s a fight against time: there are fewer and fewer people like Schoschana Trister who survived the Holocaust and can talk about it. The 87-year-old and other contemporary witnesses have now come to Berlin with Israel’s Prime Minister Jair Lapid. “This is their victory, mine as the son of a Holocaust survivor and ours as a people and a nation. We will never forget,” said Lapid after being greeted by a German military honor guard at the airport on Sunday evening.
According to the Ministry for Social Equality, around 160,000 survivors were still living in Israel at the beginning of the year. On average, they were 85 years old at the time. According to the information, 42 Holocaust survivors died every day last year.
Trister was born in Ukraine and is one of five Holocaust survivors who accompanied the head of government to Berlin. Abraham Roth is also there. He grew up in the Netherlands and was in a class with Anne Frank. Almost his entire family perished in the Holocaust. In addition to Trister and Roth, Lapid also accompanied the Shoah survivors Zvi Gill, Israel Milah and Pnina Katzir. Around six million Jews were murdered across Europe during the Holocaust.
Trister, Roth and the other Holocaust survivors were to visit the Berlin Memorial House of the Wannsee Conference with Lapid and Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday afternoon. High-ranking National Socialists met there in 1942 to plan the mass murder of Jews.
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