Bärbel Bas received the invitation to attend the ceremonies marking this year's Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day as a guest of honor after Knesset Speaker Mickey Levy spoke in the Bundestag on January 27.

She is aware of the honor and knows that this is a "special feature", said Bas to journalists in Jerusalem on Wednesday - the President of the Bundestag is Germany's highest-ranking representative at "Yom HaShoah".

The day, officially called "Day of Remembrance of the Shoah and Heroism," has been observed in Israel according to the Jewish calendar since 1951, this year it falls on April 28.

Christian Meier

Political correspondent for the Middle East and Northeast Africa.

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When alarm sirens sound across the country at ten sharp on Thursday morning, public life comes to a standstill for two minutes and people remain in remembrance.

Heads of state, government, and the Jewish community hold national ceremonies, while Holocaust survivors share their life stories in fellow Israelis' living rooms in a format called zikaron basalon in Hebrew: "living room remembrance."

In other countries, too, Jewish communities in particular hold commemorative ceremonies; in Poland, there has been the “March of the Living” from Auschwitz to Birkenau since 1988.

Meeting with Holocaust survivors and Arab politicians

Bas uses the invitation for a comparatively long visit to Israel, during which she also meets with President Yitzhak Herzog and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

The SPD politician has even scheduled time for a meeting with a civil society initiative for Holocaust survivors and with the United Arab List, the first Arab party to be part of an Israeli governing coalition.

Their program of visits began Wednesday morning at Yad Vashem.

After her tour of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Bas noted in the guest book that she thinks of the six million Jews murdered by Germans "with deep sadness and shame".

She thanked Yad Vashem "for preserving the memory," she continued: "Whoever tells the stories of the murdered gives them back their humanity." The President of the Bundestag concluded with the sentences: "We will not forget!

Never."

Also in the Knesset, where Levy received her, Bas emphasized that Germany and Israel share a "special friendship".

The Federal Republic has an ongoing obligation to leave no room for anti-Semitism and to stand by Israel.

Openly articulated anti-Semitism is increasingly being registered, and not just in Germany.

Tel Aviv University's 2021 "Annual Report on Global Antisemitism" released on Wednesday speaks of a "dramatic rise" in antisemitic incidents in almost every country where there are large numbers of Jews.

The authors attribute this to the boom in conspiracy theories in the wake of the corona pandemic, but also to the strengthening of radical right-wing and left-wing currents in several countries.

Added to this was the Gaza war in May 2021, which led to anti-Jewish agitation worldwide.

The report says pessimistically that more money, more conferences and more laws will not necessarily make a difference.

"We must relentlessly examine the effectiveness of existing strategies."

In addition to the ongoing and even increasing hatred of Jews, the change in the culture of remembrance is also an issue that is occupying politicians.

According to a recent survey by the Israel Democracy Institute think tank, almost 60 percent of Jewish Israelis believe that the Holocaust was a unique event in world history and cannot be compared with other events such as the Armenian Genocide.

But three years ago, more than 75 percent said so.

AfD impedes cooperation between the Bundestag and the Knesset

In Germany, too, there are ongoing debates about the status of the Holocaust and forms of commemoration.

In view of this, Bas would like more exchange with Israel, which should also reach younger Germans in particular.

In addition to the project for a German-Israeli youth organization that has existed for years, there are plans to revive the German-Israeli Parliamentary Forum, which has existed since 2015 and has recently not met.

A general obstacle to such formats is apparently the participation of the AfD in committees of the Bundestag, which has made official meetings with the Israeli side, which the partly right-wing extremist party avoids, more difficult.

The official start of Yom HaShoah, which according to the Jewish calendar begins on Wednesday evening, takes place at Yad Vashem with a grand state ceremony.

On Thursday morning, Bärbel Bas will light a candle in the Knesset to commemorate one of the victims of the National Socialists.

She chose Irma Nathan, a Jewess from Duisburg.

As a city councilman, Bas was present when a stumbling block in memory of Nathan was set in the ground on Lerchenstrasse, diagonally across from Bas's apartment, in 2005.

In April 1942, Irma Nathan and her husband were deported to the Izbica transit camp in Poland and murdered.