Looking back. Looking ahead. 2020-2025

212   SPEECHES | INSTITUTIONS Institutions 3.We also want to update our main exhibition in line with the latest technology and research findings. This exhibition will provide visitors with more information about the concentra- tion camp system as a whole. 4. As the commandant’s headquarters is central to under- standing the development of the entire concentration camp system, it will be integrated into our educational work on site. This will allow us to present the topic of “perpetrators” at a central point for our visitors. 5. As regards the so-called “herb garden”, we are currently in talks with the Mayor of Dachau, Florian Hartmann, and the lo- cal council. Once the site has been transferred to the Bavarian Memorial Foundation, we intend to safeguard the grounds and then incorporate them into the overall concept of the Dachau Memorial. At this location, visitors will gain insight into the brutal system of forced labour.We also plan to create spaces for personal retreat and reflection – places of quiet remem- brance. Ladies and Gentlemen, The relevance of places that help us understand the horrors of war is, tragically, greater than ever before.What long seemed unimaginable has now become grim reality: 77 years after the end of the SecondWorldWar, Europe is once again witnessing a war of aggression. And although this war of aggression – and I must stress this – cannot be equated with the singularity of the Shoah, the daily reports and images fill us with horror, concern and anger. But, thankfully, they also bring out our compassion and a will- ingness to help. Following the liberation of the concentration and extermina- tion camps in 1945, the survivors called out:“Never again!”… “Never again war – never again fascism!”. This short phrase, written just a few metres away from where we stand, also in Russian, warns us against everything that plots to corrode human coexistence: exclusion, hatred, torture, murder,   destruction, war and war crimes – and, of course, genocide. It is good and important that people in Germany, our neigh- bouring countries and lots of others around the world are mounting demonstrations and taking concrete action – in- cluding supplying weapons – to show solidarity with Ukraine. In view of our country’s historical responsibility, we refuse to remain passive in the face of this war. The survivors’ call of “Never again!” is still ringing in our ears. And it is our mission to heed the call. This place reminds us where racism, hatred and war can lead. Its future is more im- portant than ever. For it is not only our duty to remember the crimes and their victims and to preserve these historic sites;   it is also our responsibility to tell future generations that   democracy and peace are not to be taken for granted – and that both need to be fervently defended! Ladies and Gentlemen, We have chosen not to invite the official representatives of   Putin’s regime to this commemoration of liberation. This makes it all the more important that we take it upon ourselves to remember the people from Russia, Ukraine and all the for- mer Soviet republics – especially the more than 4,000 people murdered in Hebertshausen – all of them victims of German National Socialism, whose memory we are committed to preserving for generations to come. Nowhere does the tragic contradiction become clearer than here: The Red Army once liberated many concentration camps, and now – 77 years later – former prisoners who survived those camps, such as Boris Romanchenko, are being killed in Kharkiv by missile strikes from the successor army or, like Borys Zabarko, are forced to flee to Germany in old age under dire circumstances. Allow me to close with a moment of reflection, with a few lines from Bertolt Brecht’s poem The Children’s Requests (1951): “Let houses never burn again. Let bombers not be known to men. Let night be kept for peaceful sleep. Let life not be a pain so deep. Let mothers weep no more in vain. Let no one kill a man again. ….”* Thank you! * Die Gedichte von Bertolt Brecht in einem Band, Suhrkamp, 1997   (9th edition), p. 995