Looking back. Looking ahead. 2020-2025

156   SPEECHES | POLITICS AND SOCIETY Politics and Society ©Flossenbürg Memorial / T. Dashuber Honourable Minister-President Dr Markus Söder, Honourable Vice-President Oberfalzer, Esteemed Survivors and Relatives, Honourable Prof. Skriebeleit, Ladies and Gentlemen, “The day of my liberation was the saddest day of my life”. These were the words that the late Jack Terry, who passed away in 2022 and long served as a spokesperson for the former prisoners of the Flossenbürg concentration camp, used time and again in interviews and lectures to describe the paradox of 23 April 1945. On that day, Jack – Jakob – was just 15 years old and completely alone in the world. He was the only member of his family to survive the Shoah. The Nazis murdered his father and brothers. His sister and mother were shot before his very eyes. His journey had taken him from a ghetto to an SS labour camp, then to forced labour in a salt mine, and finally to the Flossenbürg concentration camp. On that day in April, for the first time in five long years, he allowed himself to think of something other than survival. He thought of his siblings… his parents… and began a lifelong process of mourning, of grief, of attempting to tend wounds that would never truly heal. Is that a day we can “celebrate”? At the end of January, the Bavarian State Parliament hosted   a reading from Das andere Leben (Light One Candle) , the memoir of Dachau survivor Solly Ganor, to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day. I delivered the opening address and was supposed to leave immediately afterwards. I had an important appointment. But I stayed. I was captivated. It mattered more to me to learn about the fate of this boy, his family and friends. I am still shaken by it to this day. Tobias Reiß, MdL First Vice-President of the Bavarian State Parliament 80th anniversary   of the liberation of Flossenbürg  27 April 2025 So, is this a day we can “celebrate”? In any case, we should be grateful. Grateful to the American soldiers who paved the way to a future of freedom – not only for the last survivors like Jack Terry, but also for all of us here   in Bavaria. They enabled us to build a free parliamentary democracy from the ruins of a devastated nation – a system founded upon the inviolable dignity of every human being. Now that is something to celebrate! But only on one condition: that we understand this freedom as the greatest responsibility imaginable. Because it is under threat. Only a few years ago, liberal democracies seemed to be moving in the right direction.We might not have reached the “end of history” or achieved “world peace”, but diplomacy, digitalisation and globalisation had the potential to bridge borders and trenches between friend and foe. And now? A war has been raging in Europe for three years, bringing the horrors of the 20th century back into our present. We thought such horrors had been left firmly in the past.   The enemies of democracy are launching an open attack on   multiple fronts. Things once taken for granted have been swept overboard in the turbulent storms of recent years. And sentiments such as insecurity, fear, anger, frustration and   division are growing into serious internal issues that threaten to tear the very fabric of our democracy. From my vantage point in parliament, I am currently witness- ing these destructive tendencies first-hand: radical shifts, irreconcilable debates, mockery, derision and hostility. It is palpable: Our democracy and freedom are in danger. In this climate, it is no coincidence that a primordial form of hatred is resurfacing: antisemitism. This was once brought to devastating perfection in places like this, culminating in the murder of millions in the name of Germany.