It is the third day of the Israeli President’s state visit to Germany – and the dark chapters of German history will also play an important role on this day. After a speech in the Bundestag, he will visit the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp memorial in Lower Saxony together with Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
At 9 a.m., Herzog will address the members of the Bundestag. It is his first appearance there. However, it is not unusual for an Israeli President to speak there: Herzog’s predecessor Reuven Rivlin most recently did so in January 2020 at a commemoration ceremony to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Herzog’s speech can be seen live streamed here.
He and Steinmeier then lay wreaths at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin before driving to Lower Saxony. There will be a tour and laying of wreaths there in the afternoon, the presidents will visit the exhibition and talk to survivors and schoolchildren. Herzog’s father, Chaim Herzog, who was President of Israel from 1983 to 1993, was one of the soldiers who liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.
Herzog flew to Berlin on Sunday. On Monday morning he met Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, and in the afternoon he took part in the central commemoration ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the Munich Olympics attack, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team in 1972.