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When Federal President Roman Herzog declared the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp to be a national day of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism 25 years ago, he combined the proclamation with the mandate to "counteract any risk of repetition."

Judging by this, his project failed as crashingly as the "jolt" that was supposed to go through Germany.

In parliament there is a national-ethnic party whose honorary chairman and parliamentary group leader think the Holocaust is just a “bird shit” in German history.

Another leading representative of the party promises a "memory policy turnaround by 180 degrees".

On the other side of the political spectrum, some of the country's most important cultural functionaries recently assumed that “Germany's historical responsibility” for the Holocaust could lead to “delegitimizing other historical experiences of violence and oppression in a moral or political general way”.

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The German culture of remembrance itself is therefore under suspicion.

Also - and therefore - from the Jewish side.

For example, the Jewish poet Max Czollek criticizes the German “theater of remembrance”, in which Jews only appear as actors in order to play the roles written for them.

Indeed, on January 27, the German Bundestag seemed willing to agree with Czollek's criticism.

Knobloch makes an announcement to the AfD

Surrounded by festive music, after an introduction by Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), the 88-year-old Holocaust survivor and chairwoman of the Israelite religious community in Munich and Upper Bavaria, Charlotte Knobloch as a contemporary witness, and the 33-year-old journalist Marina Weisband, who in 1994 as a “contingent refugee”, spoke her family came here from Ukraine as the “representative of the later born”.

Knobloch (front left) and Marina Weisband (back left) enter the plenary hall with Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU)

Source: REUTERS

At the beginning of her speech, Charlotte Knobloch described herself as a “proud German”.

She remembered her grandparents, who were also proud Germans and were murdered in Theresienstadt;

and to her father, who fought for Germany in World War I and was persecuted by the Nazis and had to hide Charlotte with Christians.

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When Knobloch described her departure from her grandmother, who valiantly described her deportation to the child who stayed behind as a “cure” from which she would soon return, she briefly lost her composure.

One wonders how she could still live among Germans after such experiences;

and indeed Knobloch wanted to emigrate to the United States after the liberation.

She got stuck, married, became a mother, got involved in the community, which lived in a "silent coexistence" with the non-Jewish environment;

saw the silence gradually broken since the late 1960s;

felt as democracy developed that "Germany was back home".

Of course, a homeland that is still threatened today - or again today.

Community members, acquaintances and friends were talking about emigration again, Knobloch reported.

Anti-Semitism manifests itself in right-wing extremism, left-wing extremism and “radical Islamic hatred”, but also there “where one speaks not of Jews but of Zionists” and demonizes and delegitimizes Israel and applies double standards to the Jewish state: demand more from it than one would ask of one's own state in a similar threat situation.

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Some complained, according to Knobloch, that there are too narrow "corridors of opinion" when it comes to anti-Semitism;

But she would like a “more defensive democracy”, which would often invoke Article 18 of the Basic Law - it says: “Whoever enjoys freedom of expression, especially freedom of the press, freedom of teaching, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, letters and post - and telecommunications secrecy, property or the right of asylum misused to fight against the free democratic basic order, forfeits these basic rights. "

“Take care of our country!”, Knobloch shouted to the MPs as a farewell - with the caveat, addressing the AfD: “I explicitly do not address these words to the far right of the plenary.” And then: “You will continue fight for your Germany and we will continue to fight for our Germany.

I tell you: you lost your fight 76 years ago. ”Nevertheless, the members of the AfD parliamentary group also stood up when Knobloch went back to their place, of course not clapping.

"That does something to you"

Marina Weisband addressed the members of the Bundestag as “dear people” - and then explained how difficult it is for members of minorities to simply live as a person among people.

In the Ukraine the family gave up the name Weisband;

in Germany, they believed, nobody cares whether you are Jewish or not.

Marina Weisband

Source: Getty Images

But even during her studies she was admired like “a zoo animal” and had to apologize all the time: for Israel, for “alleged disproportionate visibility” of Jews in Germany or for “suspicious invisibility”.

"I didn't want to be an expert on anti-Semitism," said Weisband.

But she often has to comment on it.

When she wanted to set up a “Jewish Stammtisch” with fellow students, the police said it was better not to refer to the place of the meeting.

“That does something to you.” Simply being human is a privilege for those who have nothing to fear because of their birth;

Discrimination and oppression are invisible to those who are not affected.

Young journalists make everyday anti-Semitism public

Journalists from FreeTech - Academy of Journalism and Technology are starting an interactive video project on hatred of Jews in Germany.

“Every fourth person” opposes looking away.

Source: WORLD / jedervierte.com

According to Weisband, Jews are not just a religious community, but a "national community" - a phrase that has not been heard in the Reichstag building since unfortunate times.

Weisband, however, meant the term “not ethnically or racially, but as a community of fate”.

That is why memory is so important.

But how should we carry on the memory, asked Weisband, "without reducing ourselves to a living memorial"?

Good question.

As Max Czollek says: “No, it won't be all right.

No, I am not lighting these candles with you.

No, our mothers and fathers did not go to Auschwitz together.

No, my biography is not available to you ... No, my opinion on Israel is damn none of your business.

No, you won't get off that cheap! "

Czollek describes himself as "Jud Sauer".

One would like to hear such tones in the Bundestag too.