Mickey Levy is the first speaker of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, to address the plenary session. Holocaust survivor Inge Auerbacher will also give a speech. Follow the commemoration in the live stream.
Today the Bundestag commemorates the victims of National Socialism. At the beginning of the session, Bundestag President Bärbel Bas spoke of January 27 as a “day of shame”. Today the Bundestag commemorates “the millions of people who were persecuted, robbed, humiliated, enslaved, tortured and condemned to death”. The key speeches will be held by Holocaust survivor Inge Auerbacher and the President of the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, Mickey Levy.
Inge Auerbacher, who grew up in Jebenhausen and Göppingen in a devout Jewish family, was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1942 at the age of seven. After the ghetto was liberated by the Red Army, she emigrated to the United States with her family. In 1986, the now 87-year-old published a book about her childhood memories.
Mickey Levy is the first Speaker of the Knesset to address the Bundestag plenary session. On his arrival in Berlin he said: “It is the first time in history that a Speaker of the Knesset will stand where, more than 80 years ago, the Nazi oppressors called for the annihilation of our people before committing the most horrific crime in history of humanity – the Holocaust. I will be proud to be a Jew, with six million silent souls by my side.” This refers to the approximately six million Jews murdered by the National Socialists. Levy will deliver his speech in Hebrew.
On January 27, 1945, Red Army soldiers liberated the survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp in occupied Poland. The Nazis had murdered more than a million people there.
In 1996, then Federal President Roman Herzog proclaimed the anniversary of the liberation of the camp as a day of remembrance. Since then, Parliament has held its own event around this day to commemorate the victims of persecution and murder by the National Socialists. The participants in the commemoration event include Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Federal Council President Bodo Ramelow (left).