German ambassador declares ‘never again’ to Holocaust survivors

MIRAH LANGER

He had never met a Jew because every Jew in his home town had been wiped out during the Holocaust.

“No one was left. In the little home town where I come from there was a synagogue that was burnt down. And there was a Jewish cemetery that no one really took care of. There were no Jews.”

He said that he, as well as other embassy representatives, felt honoured and humbled that survivors had accepted the invitation to spend the morning with them.

“It was Germans that did what they did to you. They killed your relatives and your friends; they humiliated you; they put you in concentration camps; they tortured you.”

“I would like to say that what was done in the name of my country, my state, and my people was an incredible disgrace. It must never happen again.”

While decades had passed, he knew it was “still very much alive” for the survivors.

“That we engage with one another, that we can become friends despite everything that has happened, this is a great miracle,” he said.

 “I presume that some of you continue to have nightmares. There cannot be a single day in your lives where you do not think about what has happened to your friends and families … and to the people that were of your belief.

“What is behind us – and between us – is very deep and painful, but still, I am honoured that you are with us here,” said the amiable ambassador, who brought his 13 year-old daughter, Emma, with him to the event.

Schäfer said that he struggled to reconcile his family connections with history.

In particular, he said, he often mused on the complexity of his connection to his own grandfather.

“I loved my grandfather, [yet he] was a soldier and a member of the National Socialist party. Why did he do what he did?

“I don’t know what he did, because he wasn’t willing to disclose it until the end of his life.

“Those questions haunt me, they haunt us Germans, and they might haunt even you.”

“Why was it that a civilised nation like the Germans were able to commit such terrible crimes, to sink so low into the abyss?

“I don’t have an answer. I don’t know if anyone has an answer. Those people who committed the mass murder, when the war was over, they returned to their families, their homes, and their civil life, and never again committed any crime. It is unbelievable, and it is inexplicable.”

Schäfer noted that Germany had accepted full culpability for its history. He gave the example of how it was decided to erect a memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe in the heart of Berlin.

“There is no other nation in the world that would erect a monument, in the most important part of its capital, to display the worst part of what happened in its history,” he noted.

Schäfer said that while “nothing can be compared to the Shoah, still nations celebrate the better parts of their history and forget about the worst parts. We didn’t have that option.”

As such, he believes that while there is unease around increased support for the right wing, nevertheless the “political middle ground stands very strong”. 

He said the German people would “never accept something like [the Nazi] regime again”.

The survivors asked Emma to speak about her impressions of the Holocaust as a member of the youngest generation.

She said that she believed it remained the responsibility of all Germans to familiarise themselves with history.

 “Even though it is very far in the past, every day I think about how some people could do something so awful to another person,” Emma said.

 “I am so happy that some of us Germans and Jews are able to talk now; I am very thankful that you decided to come.”

It was a sentiment shared by the survivors who attended. 

Doris Lurie, a survivor who fled from Vienna, said  the event was key in helping to get over “the fact of us and them,” Emma said.

“There was a time when I would not have liked to fraternise with Germans, but that soon faded.

They are no longer to blame; they are a different generation – you cannot hang it onto them. We have all become more friendly. It is not a matter of forgiveness anymore.”

Concentration camp survivor Don Krausz said the event was an intervention that helped “lessen the pain, lessen the hatred, and bring people together”.

Hungarian survivor Veronica Phillips, aged 92, put it succinctly when commenting on her impression of the ambassador.

“He is a real mensch!” she declared.