Yad Vashem
Israel commemorates the Jews murdered in the Holocaust
Israeli soldiers in the Yad Vashem Museum. Israel commemorated the Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Photo: Ilia Yefimovich/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Cars stop in the street, people stop, sirens wail: Israel commemorates the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
Israel commemorated the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Sirens wailed nationwide for two minutes in the morning. Cars stopped in the streets, people stood still and commemorated the dead.
A commemoration event then began at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, which was also attended by the President of the Bundestag, Bärbel Bas. The politician laid a wreath on behalf of the Bundestag. She then became the first high-ranking representative from Germany to attend a ceremony in Parliament at which the names of Holocaust victims were read out.
Bundestag President Bas takes part
Bas had previously lit a candle in the Knesset in memory of the Jewess Irma Nathan, who was deported from her hometown of Duisburg 80 years ago. She was murdered by the Nazis in 1942. Her husband and two children were also killed by the Nazis. The German National Socialists and their accomplices murdered a total of six million Jews during World War II.
At the official opening ceremony at Yad Vashem on Wednesday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett emphasized the uniqueness of the Holocaust. “Even the worst wars today are not the Holocaust and are not comparable to the Holocaust,” he said, according to a statement. “The Nazis sought to hunt down all Jews and exterminate every single one of them.”
Bahn boss Lutz lays down a wreath
Richard Lutz was the first head of Deutsche Bahn to lay a wreath at the central Holocaust memorial event at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. The red and white wreath bore the name of the Friends of Yad Vashem in Germany, of which Lutz is a member. He laid it down in the Israeli memorial together with the chairman and former Bild editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann. Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day this year is themed “Train Journeys to Destruction: The Deportation of the Jews During the Holocaust.”
The Deutsche Reichsbahn played a crucial role in the extermination of European Jews. Around three million people in Europe were taken by train to the Nazi extermination sites from 1941 onwards – most of them Jews, but also Sinti and Roma. “The cattle or railway wagon, the most important means of deportation, thus became one of the most well-known symbols of the Holocaust,” says Yad Vashem.
Bahn boss Lutz told the German Press Agency after the wreath-laying ceremony: “Our predecessor organization was significantly involved in the murder of European Jews, Sinti and Roma through deportations. Millions of people were perished on trains.”
Lutz: “Special trains to death”
It is considered certain that the systematic murder of millions of people would not have been possible without the Reichsbahn. The “special trains to death” were a profitable business for them. Often the travel costs had to be paid by the Jews themselves.
In January last year, the Left, Greens and FDP parliamentary groups in the Bundestag supported demands for compensation payments for the rail transport of Holocaust victims. However, today’s Deutsche Bahn is not the legal successor of the Reichsbahn.
However, Deutsche Bahn has a special responsibility, said Lutz. “We feel here and in our everyday lives more than ever how important it is to do everything we can to fight anti-Semitism, hatred and violence.” Deutsche Bahn is committed to “a critical examination of the role of the Reichsbahn in the Nazi era”.
161,400 Holocaust survivors left in Israel
According to the authorities, there are still 161,400 Holocaust survivors in Israel. The average age is 85.5 years, it said. More than 1000 affected are even older than 100 years.
According to the Jewish Claims Conference, around 100 Holocaust survivors have immigrated to Israel from Ukraine since the beginning of the war. In addition, around 70 people affected were brought to Germany from Ukraine with the help of the organization. The Claims Conference, with its headquarters in New York, is committed to material compensation for those affected.
According to Israeli data, at the end of 2020, 15.2 million Jews lived worldwide, most of them – 6.9 million – in Israel. The second largest Jewish community with 6 million was in the USA. At that time, 118,000 Jews lived in Germany. According to the information, there are still fewer Jews worldwide than before World War II. At that time it was 16.6 million, it said.