Thank you very much for your invitation and for the opportunity to speak to you on this important day.

“Death is a master from Germany”.
It is this famous quote from Paul Celan, from the poem "Death Fugue", that I am reminded of here today.
The Sachsenhausen concentration camp, like all concentration camps, showed us just how far death’s cruel mastery can go.

Today, on Yom HaShoah, we remember the six million Jews who were murdered in the Shoah.
We remember six million Jewish children, parents, siblings, grandparents, husbands and wives who were deprived of their rights, persecuted, humiliated and murdered.

And today we pay special tribute to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which took place 80 years ago tomorrow. It was an uprising of courage against malice, of freedom against tyranny, of right against wrong.
It was a hopeless undertaking and, for that reason, an especially heroic act.

On 19 April 1943, the Wehrmacht and SS troops marched into the ghetto in order to deport its inhabitants to concentration camps. They met with unexpectedly fierce resistance – a resistance of brave Jews, which was ultimately broken by the brute force of the Nazis’ extermination machine. The ghetto was razed to the ground. The suppression of the uprising ended symbolically on 16 May 1943, when the Germans demolished the Warsaw synagogue. Around 20,000 Jews had been murdered. Over 30,000 were deported to concentration camps.

“The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw Is No More!” That is the title – complete with a triumphant exclamation mark – of the so-called Stroop Report. It was written for Heinrich Himmler by SS brigade leader Jürgen Stroop. A truly hideous document, it proudly displays the Nazis’ own crimes in the style of a family photo album. Primo Levi once wrote of the “shame that the Germans did not know”. The Stroop report is just one of many examples of this.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Shoah was conceived by Germans, organised by Germans and executed by Germans.
The fact that Jews and Germans are now commemorating Yom HaShoah together is nothing short of a miracle.
This miracle, I believe, is rooted in the following two factors: The willingness of the Jews to reach out to the nation of perpetrators; and the shame that we Germans began to feel and that we will always feel: Shame for the horrors that were committed by Germans and in their name; shame for the crimes that members of our families ignored, tolerated or even perpetrated; shame for a history that will leave its mark on our country forever.

And this shame also imposes on us certain obligations. It obliges us to keep the memory alive, to make sure that it is never forgotten. It obliges us to take action against initial signs and to look at the present with an alert mind. It obliges us to recognise, identify and fight anti-Semitism – the root of the evil.

In Germany, the number of anti-Semitic crimes has risen in recent years. Just ten days ago, demonstrators marched through the German capital chanting the most disgusting anti-Semitic slogans. This is truly shameful. A situation where Jews cannot feel safe in this country is something we can never accept.

It was with this in mind that the German Federal Government adopted the National Strategy against Antisemitism and for Jewish Life on 30 November last year. It is the Federal Government’s first strategy dedicated exclusively to combating anti-Semitism and fostering Jewish life.
This, I believe, is particularly important – and it is something we have neglected for far too long: to give Jewish life even more opportunities to express itself, to be visible and to be heard.

The Nazis wanted the death of all Jewish life.
We must remember this. And we must also remember that Judaism, above all, means life.
Today, we observe Yom HaShoah and remember the victims. We remember their death and their suffering; but we also remember their lives, their courage and their joy.

And I am both humbled and grateful, ladies and gentlemen, that I am able to do this with you.