Israel’s President in Germany: A visit without routine

The visit of the Israeli President Herzog is dedicated to the memory of the 1972 Olympic assassination. He will also visit the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp – which his father once helped to liberate.

Visits by top Israeli politicians to Germany are never routine. Words are weighed, gestures take on special meaning.

The warm embrace in front of Bellevue Palace made it clear that Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Israeli President Isaac Herzog have known and trusted each other for many years. Both of them referred to each other several times as “friends” at the later press conference, addressing each other by their first names.

Despite the formal external setting of this state visit – including the patrol of the Bundeswehr honor formation in the castle garden – the meeting of the two statesmen and their wives seemed extremely familiar, almost like a family reunion. Herzog is in Germany for three days and of course his visit touches on historical events that determine and have strained the relationship between the two countries.

Olympic assassination attempt in 1972: Shamefully long until an understanding was reached

Only shortly before Herzog’s visit was the federal government able to come to an agreement with the families of the victims of the attack during the 1972 Olympic Games. At that time, Palestinian terrorists had broken into the quarters of the Israeli team. They killed two athletes and took nine others hostage. Their liberation by the completely overwhelmed German security forces later failed disastrously at the Fürstenfeldbruck air base: In the end, all the hostages, one police officer and five of the eight assassins were killed.

The Federal Republic is now paying compensation to the relatives of the Israeli victims – a total of 28 million euros. It was also agreed that a commission of historians would work through the dramatic days in Munich in 1972. Federal President Steinmeier said:

“It is indeed shameful that it took 50 years until this understanding was reached in the last few days. And I am very aware that not all wounds can be healed with this understanding, of course.”

President Isaac Herzog expressed his incomprehension that the Olympic Games had continued at all at that time. It took a lot of effort for the families of those killed to keep the Palestinian terrorists’ assassination attempt on the Israeli athletes in the public eye, Herzog recalled:

Visit to the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

On Monday, Herzog and Steinmeier will take part in a commemoration ceremony in Fürstenfeldbruck to mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination. On Tuesday, Isaac Herzog will also speak in the German Bundestag on the relationship between the two countries. Then he drives with Steinmeier to the memorial of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Herzog’s father, former Israeli President Chaim Herzog, was a soldier at the end of World War II and one of the liberators of the camp where the Nazis had murdered well over 50,000 prisoners, including Jews and prisoners of war. Steinmeier predicted that this would certainly be a very emotional moment for his state guest:

“We will stand where her father fought as an officer in the British Army in 1945 to liberate this place of horror. Your visit also symbolizes the special gift of German-Israeli friendship for us Germans.”

For his part, Herzog recalled the first Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, who visited Bergen-Belsen a few months after the end of the war in 1945 – and looked to the future:

“At the end of his visit, he signed a note on which he had written only a few words: ‘Am Israel Chai!’ The Jewish people live! I stand here today and repeat the same message: Am Israel Chai! The Jewish people live!”

Because Israel is still threatened today by countries like Iran, which is calling for the annihilation of Israel, but also by the terror of militant Palestinians, according to the Israeli President.

Scholz: fight against anti-Semitism “top priority”

While the state banquet was being prepared in Berlin’s Bellevue Palace in honor of the Israeli guests, the German group of friends of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem celebrated its 25th anniversary in a Berlin synagogue. In his speech, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz recalled that not everyone in Germany had learned from history. There were more than 3,000 anti-Semitic crimes in Germany last year. Scholz:

The Chancellor also referred to the visit of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the Chancellery in mid-August. Abbas had equated the military operations of the Israeli army in the Palestinian territories with the Holocaust.

Scholz said it was made clear to the Palestinian side that the Holocaust was a unique crime against humanity that the Federal Republic would not tolerate being relativised. With his silence immediately after the Abbas statement during a joint press conference, Olaf Scholz had received harsh criticism at the time.