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Concentration camp survivor Esther Bejarano (96), chairwoman of the Auschwitz Committee, appealed to Germans on Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27) to become more involved against anti-Semitism, anti-Gypsyism and racism.
She called for May 8th to be declared a public holiday as “the day of liberation from the Nazi regime”.
This holiday should be dedicated to people's great hopes of "freedom, equality, brotherhood and sisterhood", Bejarano said during a digital memorial event of the Auschwitz Committee on the Holocaust on Sunday in Hamburg.
It is currently not possible for Jews to forget the Holocaust, said Swiss director Eva Stocker, whose film “The War Against the Jews” premiered in Switzerland last autumn.
Every swastika on a synagogue and every hateful message from right-wing extremists reminds the Jews of their history during the Nazi era.
Stocker grew up with Hungarian adoptive parents.
It was only decades later that she found out by chance that as an infant she had been handed from one of the deportation trains that went to Auschwitz.
A railway official accepted it and saved her life.
Bejarano criticized the corona deniers.
They refused to wear a mask as a "deprivation of liberty".
Bejarano, who recently had herself vaccinated, said: “They don't know what they're talking about.” History has shown that conspiracy ideologies can easily lead to extermination ideologies.
She also criticized the fact that anti-fascist groups were being harassed more and more often and that the association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime - Bund der Antifaschisten (VVN-BdA) - was denied non-profit status.
Bejarano had played the accordion in the girls' orchestra in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
After the war she lived in Israel and moved to Hamburg in 1960.