Looking back. Looking ahead. 2020-2025

INSTITUTIONS | SPEECHES   201 Institutions ©Flossenbürg Memorial / T. Dashuber Dear Prof. Jörg Skriebeleit, Honourable State Minister Füracker, Dear Member of Parliament and Director of the Bavarian   Memorial Foundation Karl Freller, Dear Youp Zwolschen,  Dear Survivors and Relatives, Ladies and Gentlemen, Around this time 50 years ago, in the Easter holidays of 1974 – 29 years after U.S. troops had liberated the Flossenbürg concentration camp – a group of older pupils from aWest German secondary school on the Rhine near Koblenz travelled to the United States to take part in an international youth exchange programme with a high school in Pennsylvania. It was an experience none of us would never forget – from our first encounter with the great metropolis of New York City to everyday life with host families in a diverse country shaped by immigration. In fact, it was so unforgettable for me that I find myself speaking about it here today. What has stayed with me most is a particular history lesson in that American school fifty years ago, where American and German teenagers sat together and watched U.S. Army Signal Corps films documenting the liberation of Nazi concentration camps in the spring of 1945.We had never seen anything like it. After all, such historical footage – or even testimonies from surviving contemporary witnesses – had not yet found their way intoWest German classrooms. The power of those images and the cruelty they revealed – together with the intensity of the classroom discussions – hit us with an immediacy and emotional force that stood in stark contrast to our German everyday reality in the early 1970s. That history lesson confront- ed our ignorance – shaped by personal, societal and political factors – with the quest for knowledge and an encounter with the truth. Today, 79 years after the liberation of the Flossenbürg concen- tration camp, the way we remember our country’s history and Prof. Udo Hebel President of the University of Regensburg 79th anniversary  of the liberation of Flossenbürg  21 April 2024 the knowledge we hold and share has changed – and hope- fully for the better. Over the past decades, many individuals, institutions and organisations have taken responsibility for shaping Germany’s culture of remembrance. Many individ- uals, institutions and organisations have stood up against silence and concealment, against active and passive ignorance, against personal and collective forgetting, and against the convenience of choosing not to remember. They have shown tremendous commitment, integrity and conviction in helping to create a landscape of remembrance that is firmly anchored in civil society. All those involved deserve the highest praise and recognition – especially the Flossenbürg Memorial, its director Jörg Skrie- beleit, its exceptional team and all supporters in politics and society.We also owe a debt of gratitude above all – and from the bottom of our hearts – to all survivors and to the relatives of the victims of National Socialism, who, after and despite everything, have taken on the burden and the task of bearing witness and continue to carry this responsibility to this day. We are grateful for the many forms of remembrance work that create a platform for knowledge, human encounters and emo- tional engagement – for an individual and collective practice of remembrance that stands resolutely for justice, mutual un- derstanding and trust, and one that works tirelessly to secure the future resilience of Germany’s memory culture. And yet today, one year before the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Flossenbürg, our responsible, inclusive and forward-looking culture of remembrance in Germany faces a grave challenge.We find ourselves confronted with sinis- ter attempts to cast doubt on the established knowledge of the singular crimes of National Socialism.We find ourselves confronted with disinformation, fake news, trivialisation, hate rhetoric and manipulative attempts to shift the boundaries of remembrance, to reopen gaps in memory and to normalise false or long-disproven narratives.We find ourselves confront- ed with a string of unacceptable campaigns to discredit and