27 January marks the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. For 19 years we have observed this date as the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. In 2024 too we are making a statement against forgetting. And we will never stop doing so! Commemorating the victims of the crimes of National Socialism means preserving the memory of countless personal fates. For the Jewish community it means giving visibility to the anger, the pain and the grief and offering one another comfort. At the same time, remembrance is a warning, an urgent charge to society as a whole never to let anything similar happen again. The threat to Jewish life was not simply removed from the world in 1945; since then it has continued in the misanthropic ideology of antisemitism in all its forms. Now and today, and especially in the past months, we are experiencing a dramatic increase in attacks on Jews; our safety is in increasing danger here and worldwide. We must take action. Not only on the day of remembrance, but every day.
We must never stop!
Remembrance of the Shoah must not be an abstract ritual. It is a daily appeal to society as a whole. With our video campaign at several central locations in Berlin we wanted to bring this home to everyone on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Never again is now!
