Steinmeier at the memorial event: “Anti-Semitism must never again have a place”

Status: October 18, 2021 2:48 p.m.

Exactly 80 years ago the first deportation train started from Berlin to Poland. Federal President Steinmeier called at a commemorative event to counter hatred of Jews. At the same time he warned of a rise in anti-Semitism.

On the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the deportations of Berlin Jews, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned of a rise in anti-Semitism in Germany. Jewish fellow citizens are “repeatedly and increasingly exposed to anti-Semitic hate speech and anti-Semitic attacks,” he said at a memorial event in Berlin-Grunewald.

“Anti-Semitism must never again have a place in our society,” said Steinmeier. Never again should anti-Semitic thought and action remain without contradiction and public reactions. Jews would have a natural place in our society. “Jewish culture is not only part of German Culture, it has shaped it deeply and has given it richly. “

80 years ago: Start of the first deportation train

Steinmeier spoke at an event at the Gleis 17 memorial in Berlin-Grunewald, where the beginning of the deportation of Jewish people to ghettos and extermination camps by the Nazis was commemorated 80 years ago.

On October 18, 1941, the first Berlin “Osttransport” with more than 1,000 Jewish children, women and men left the Grunewald train station in the direction of Lodz. In that month, the systematic deportation and thus the murder of the Jewish population began in other places in what was then the German Reich.

“Abyssal, horrific happenings”

The head of state spoke of an “abysmal, horrific event”. “We Germans are still to blame for the perpetrators, helpers and supporters of the planned murder of European Jews,” said Steinmeier. “We still feel the shame that fellow citizens have been singled out from the midst of society: harassed, disenfranchised, dispossessed – and finally sent on a journey to their death.” The shocking fact is that the crime occurred before everyone’s eyes.

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