Looking back. Looking ahead. 2020-2025

136   SPEECHES | SURVIVORS AND LIBERATORS Survivors and Liberators ©Bavarian State Parliament Photo Archive / S. Obermeier Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope you will forgive me for not addressing everyone by name, though I do see many familiar faces in the audience   this evening. I will, however, mention two names: Ilse Aigner, President of the Bavarian State Parliament. You know the   special place you hold in my old heart. And Karl Freller, Member of Parliament and Director of the Bavarian Memorial Founda- tion. Our friendship goes back many years. I would like to call out to you in Hebrew: Amcha – you are one of us. In just a few weeks, I will be celebrating my 96th birthday. And that brings me straight to the theme of this year’s commem­ oration for the victims of National Socialism – here in the   plenary hall of the Bavarian State Parliament, the very heart of our democracy.We, the survivors of the Shoah, will soon be gone. For nearly 20 years, scholars and memorial educators have been reflecting on how remembrance culture will continue without us, the contemporary witnesses. I will return to that topic later. Anyway, my time hasn’t come just yet… I recently had a routine check-up with my cardiologist in Israel, and he told me that he plans to give me a new pace- maker for my 100th birthday. Now that’s an offer I can’t refuse. It is estimated that around 350,000 Holocaust survivors are still with us today. Around half of them live in Israel – at least 125,000 people who, as children, escaped the mass murder of six million European Jews. Many of those who survived could not bear the painful memories; they took their own lives, suf- fered from mental illnesses, or never truly re-found their foot- ing in life. They are, as we say, “left behind” – in Auschwitz or in one of the many other German extermination camps. Only a small fraction ever came forward as contemporary witnesses – and even they remained silent for 20 to 30 years after the war – because they were dismissed and ignored by contemporary historians, politicians and the general population of Germany and Israel. And we know why. Abba Naor Act of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism at the Bavarian State Parliament  24 January 2024 Many years passed before people finally realised that the first-hand accounts of contemporary witnesses are simply irreplaceable. They are not only an essential source for histor- ical research, but also hold great significance for the present and the future. As the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate ElieWiesel, who passed away in 2016, once said: “Whoever listens to a witness becomes a witness himself”. Over the past 30 years, I have spoken to thousands of chil- dren and adolescents. My experiences have taught me that direct encounters with contemporary witnesses offer the best protection against the poison of antisemitism – a poison which, especially now, after the Hamas terror attack on Israeli civilians on 7 October, is spreading alarmingly across Europe and Germany. After the war, I did not accept the so-called “reparations” from the German state. 6,000 marks for my stolen childhood and youth, for my mother and my brothers – Chaim, who was shot dead for sneaking out of the Kaunas Ghetto to buy bread, and Berale, who was only five when he was gassed in Auschwitz-Birkenau with our mother, Chana, in July 1944.   No amount of reparations could ever make up for that. Nobody is born an antisemite. It is the responsibility of parents and society as a whole to shield children from hatred,   antisemitism and racism. My own “reparation” is found in the conversations I have with schoolchildren – and the letters   I receive from them. A group of pupils at the Marist Gymnasium in Furth once presented me with a book bound from their letters. A single phrase was embossed in gold on the cover:“Thank you.”   A boy called Robert wrote:“We – and especially you – can show the world that there is another way”. And a girl in the United States, when asked about the essence of National Socialism, wrote:“Hitler wanted to destroy humanity”.What wonderful children they are! I love them all – whether Jewish or not.