Looking back. Looking ahead. 2020-2025

POLITICS AND SOCIETY | SPEECHES   155 National Socialist dictatorship, terror, war and extermination are interconnected. The political prisoners here at Dachau were the first. They were followed by many others whom the Nazis wanted to eliminate – particularly once war broke out. Among them were resistance fighters from the occupied countries, like Jean Lafaurie. Around 30,000 Jews, like Mr Naor, were brought here from other camps for forced labour in the arms industry. Their extermination by labour was factored in; about half of them did not survive. There were a number of Jewish women among them too – like Miriam Rosenthal, whose son is with us today. Mr Rosenthal, your mother gave birth to you in Kaufer- ing, one of the worst of the Dachau subcamps. And you both survived the horror. That survival borders on the miraculous. So does the survivors’ commitment to this memorial site.   If it weren’t for the survivors and the Comité International de Dachau, this site would not exist. 60 years ago, the Dachau Memorial was opened – the first site memorialising a   concentration camp in the Federal Republic as it was then.   It was former prisoners who secured Dachau as a memorial   of Nazi crimes. To do so, they had to swim against the tide   of a society who would rather have kept it all quiet and wanted to forget as quickly as they could. I thank everyone who works to combat forgetfulness and to nurture our active culture of remembrance, against much   resistance, both here at the Dachau Memorial and in many other places. You work tirelessly to help young people in   particular understand the incomprehensible. In that   endeavour, I consider it vital that you make use of social media – or “digital counters”, as I call them. Although awareness-  raising via TikTok on the Holocaust and Nazi crimes may seem outlandish at first, we need to be present there with the   information we can provide and take a stand with ready   defences wherever people are active. Your work is valuable and vital. It is not enough to   formulaically invoke the lessons of history and good intentions at remembrance events. It saddens me that more than 80% of Jewish people in   Germany cite antisemitism as a major problem in their lives. And it enrages me that antisemitic crimes are reaching record levels year on year. I was shocked when I heard the statistics for 2023 from the Federal Criminal Police Office last year. The number of antisemitic crimes rose by 96%; the report counted 5,164. That’s 15 crimes against Jews every day. Notably, 2023 saw fewer attacks between 1 January and   7 October than after the Hamas attack on Israel, from   8 October to 31 December. That’s despite October being three quarters of the way through the year. The investigating   authorities consider this effect a reverberation of the attack. Such crimes, too, often start with arrangements made on   social media. In that context as elsewhere, we are all needed   to voice opposition. Antisemitism scholar Wolfgang Benz has referred to memorial sites as sources of sense-making for the political culture of a democratic state. Our democracy needs a political culture that does not see the differently minded as enemies.We need a political culture which enables argument between different perspectives and opposing interests – but which never targets people personally. We know from German history what is possible. The National Socialists destroyed human dignity   systematically and millions of times. That’s why human dignity is the first item in our Basic Law. And that’s why our constitution places limits on the demo­ cratic principle. Basic rights, the rule of law and minority   rights are indispensable. They are the essence of our liberal democracy. At the remembrance event in the Bundestag in 2021,   Charlotte Knobloch urged us to “please look after our country”. I will do everything I possibly can – as President of the   Bundesstag and as a German who loves this country.