Looking back. Looking ahead. 2020-2025

POLITICS AND SOCIETY | SPEECHES   173 Politics and Society ©Bavarian Memorial Foundation / T. Hase Ladies and Gentlemen, Honourable Chairman Freller, Honourable State Minister Roth, Esteemed Prof. Piazolo, Dear Colleagues from the Bavarian State Parliament, Honourable President Dr Heßler, Ladies and Gentlemen, Almost 80 years have passed since the end of the Second WorldWar. And with it, the era of contemporary witnesses – those who can recount National Socialism and the Shoah from their own experience – is coming to an end. Contemporary witnesses make history visible. As fewer   Holocaust survivors remain to share their stories, it is   becoming more and more challenging to grasp the   unimaginable. As their voices slowly fade, me must find new ways to keep their memory alive. That is what makes authentic memorial sites so important. They are places of remembrance for the victims’ suffering and places of learning for future generations. We want future generations to understand that concentration camps were not distant, abstract places of horror that we   can just set aside in one corner of our minds, as we might with events from antiquity or the early Middle Ages. The monstrosity of the Nazi crimes in the “Third Reich” is too significant to ever be forgotten. Memorial sites also hold up a mirror to society. Those who see what happened in the past – who see what human beings were capable of – will hopefully look at the present with more open eyes. They will not look away when antisemitism, racism and nationalism spread. They will recognise the warning signs that once led to the worst crimes in human history. Dr Florian Herrmann, MdL Head of the State Chancellery and Bavarian State Minister of Federal Affairs and Media  Ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the Bavarian Memorial Foundation at the Munich Residenz  19 June 2023 Almost 80 years after the end of the SecondWorldWar, and 90 years since the Dachau concentration camp was first put into operation, we have learned to take an open and unflinch- ing approach to the crimes against humanity committed by the National Socialists. If we want to foster an effective culture of remembrance, we need to relate history to the present and ask what it teaches us. This is exactly what prompted the Free State of Bavaria to establish the Bavarian Memorial Foundation on 1 January 2003 and entrust it with the Dachau Memorial and the Flossenbürg Memorial. We wanted the remembrance of Nazi crimes to be a shared responsibility – anchored in society as a whole. The Foundation plays a crucial role in ensuring that the history of National   Socialism and the concentration camps remains present in public consciousness. The memorials in Dachau and Flossenbürg are some of the most significant places of remembrance in the whole of   Bavaria. Their global relevance is reflected in the large number of visitors from around the world each year. Since 2013, the Foundation has also been responsible for 75 concentration camp cemeteries and gravesites – and works closely with local authorities and organisations when it comes to managing over 200 former subcamps. I would like to take this opportunity to express my tremendous gratitude to the Honourable Vice-President of the State Parlia- ment, Charly Freller, who has now been directing the Founda- tion since 2007. Your dedication to remembering the darkest chapters of German history has long been one of your most cherished missions, dating back to your time as a secondary school teacher. You are an educator in the truest sense of the word, and as you, President Dr Schuster, so rightly said:“Karl Freller is a stroke of good fortune for the Jewish community