STORY: At the end of his three-day state visit, Israeli President Herzog visited the Bergen-Belsen Memorial together with Federal President Steinmeier. On their website it says literally, “when the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated on April 15, 1945, British soldiers found thousands of unburied corpses and tens of thousands of terminally ill people.” Steinmeier also addressed Herzog’s direct connection to this place in his speech. “One of the British liberators of this camp in 1945 was Chaim Herzog, who later became the sixth President of the State of Israel. He is the father of today’s President, Isaac Herzog. At that time he helped, first and foremost, to liberate the people who were in the concentration camps under the most brutal conditions were held captive. He stood where we are now and saw unimaginable suffering.” In view of the graves of the dead of Bergen-Belsen and the millions murdered in the Shoah, any form of anti-Semitism, which unfortunately exists in this country today, is an alarm signal, said the Federal President. Anti-Semitism should have no place in society and where it becomes visible it must be opposed. The Israeli President referred to shared responsibility. “We, Israel and Germany, must act together and defend the homeland of the Jewish people, their future, their security and their prosperity, and uncompromisingly combat all anti-Semitism and racism. This is our duty on behalf of the past for the future.” According to the memorial, a total of 52,000 concentration camp prisoners from many European countries died in the camp or immediately after liberation as a result of their imprisonment.