After a good hour, everything is over on this cold January morning. With parliamentary president Wolfgang Schäuble in the lead, the highest representatives of the country leave the plenum of the Bundestag, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and head of state Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The chairs on which they had just sat in front of the rows of deputies are cleared away by the ushers, just like the white floral decoration of the stenographer's desk.

A few minutes later, the Bundestag will start with the first item of the normal agenda for this Thursday, starting at 10.35, it will be the Annual Economic Report 2019.

But business as usual is not possible on this January 31st. Not after the speech that Bundestag President Schäuble has previously held. Especially not after the performance of Saul Friedländer.

Friedländer, 86, is a spry gentleman with snow-white hair, he has left the plenum at the side of the Federal President. But his speech resonates here for a long time.

Thirteen years ago, January 27, 1945, when the Auschwitz Concentration Camp was freed by Soviet soldiers, was proclaimed the German Day of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism. Since then, there has been a corresponding commemoration round about this date in the Bundestag, this time Saul Friedländer has been invited as a speaker.

Friedländer was born in Prague in 1932, the son of a Jewish family. He survived the Holocaust because his parents, who had since fled to France, placed him there in a Catholic boarding school under a different identity; his father and mother were later murdered in Auschwitz. He emigrated to Palestine, fought in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, and eventually became a major historian. Research focus: the history of National Socialism, especially the Holocaust.

But on this day speaks less of the scientist who tries to explain what will seem even 74 years after the end of the Third Reich still so incomprehensible, but the person concerned. The survivor.

The fact that Friedlander speaks German in this day, for which he apologizes, albeit perfectly, at first, makes his descriptions even more impressive: his parents, Friedländer tells, spoke at the time in Prague almost exclusively in this language, "which I have been practicing for many years I forgot that later - but not at school - I bought back and which I rarely use. " (Read the speech in the text here).

"Preserve primary feeling of bewilderment"

In his work Friedländer pleaded for preserving the "primary feeling of bewilderment". And that is exactly what he is transporting to the German parliament this morning. There are more survivors among the guests of honor at the top of the grandstands, but many students have also been invited.

His parents could not imagine that they, like millions of other Jews, would be murdered by Germans. Why? "I had a comrade" was the first song he could play on the piano, Friedländer says.

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Survivor Friedlander

But that at least from 1939 Adolf Hitler spoke publicly and then again and again about his plans to wipe out the Jews, Friedländer stresses as well. The victims often just did not want to believe it until it was too late - and most Germans did not want to know anything afterwards.

The longer it takes to go back to what happened back then, the bigger, after all, despite all the research and explanations, the bewilderment. And at the same time, as Bundestag President Schäuble has previously pointed out, the Holocaust still determines the German self-image.

"No nation can choose their history or strip them," says the CDU politician. "History is the presupposition of the present, and dealing with it is the basis of the future of every country Schäuble emphasizes:" From the German guilt our responsibility, not to forget. "

But because this is getting more and more difficult, the time of National Socialism is becoming more and more abstract for the growing German generations, people like Saul Friedländer are so important. Because he can at least tell about being affected by the incomprehensible. And because it makes the gigantic numbers, the millions of murdered Jews, homosexuals, Sinti and Roma, prisoners of war and other Nazi victims tangible.

Gauland listens attentively - and claps

While Friedlander speaks, sits only a few feet away, in the first row of AFD MPs, Alexander Gauland. The faction leader has called the "Third Reich" as a "scary bird" in German history, the constitutional protection accuses the party in parts of the relativization of National Socialism. Now Gauland listens - so it looks at least - very attentively. He applauds in the central places, like most of his colleagues, in the end rises the complete faction.

Eight days ago, during a commemoration session for the victims of National Socialism in the Bavarian state parliament, a large part of the AfD faction there left the plenary chamber when the president of the Jewish Community of Munich, Charlotte Knobloch, directly attacked the AFD in her speech.

Germany as a "bulwark" against nationalism

Friedländer renounces on Thursday on such explicit attacks. The effect of his speech does not diminish that. It is particularly moving when he describes how death or survival depended on the arbitrariness of others: his parents did not want to venture across the Alps to Switzerland with little Saul, so they left him at the boarding school. When they were seized by the Swiss border police in September 1942, Friedländer said that just this week Jewish refugees were allowed to stay with small children - his parents, on the other hand, were sent back to France

The life story of Saul Friedländer is a miracle. It is also a miracle that he has not lost faith in Germany - today the country is the murderer of his parents for him "how many people worldwide" even one of the "strong bastions" against nationalism, extremism and authoritarianism. His appeal: "We all hope that you have the moral steadfastness to continue to fight for tolerance and inclusiveness, humanity and freedom, in short, for true democracy."

Of course, there have always been decent people in Friedlander's eyes in Germany. At the end of his speech, he recalls Hans von Dohnanyi, who was executed in April 1945 because he had helped Jews flee. Why did he do that in the knowledge of the impending death penalty? "It was just the inevitable course of a decent person," Friedländer quotes him.

If you understand Saul Friedländer correctly, for him today the decent people in the vast majority in Germany. And he wishes it to stay that way.