Angela Merkel Condemns Hate at Dachau Anniversary
German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned anti-Semitism during a ceremony to make 70 years since the liberation of the Nazis’ Dachau concentration camp.
“We are all forever called upon, to never close our eyes and ears to those who today accost, threaten and attack people when they identify themselves somehow as Jews or also when they side with the state of Israel,” Merkel said at Sunday’s ceremony, attended by Holocaust survivors.
Merkel first visited Dachau in 2013, the first German chancellor to do so.
“There were unfathomable horrors everywhere,” said Merkel. “They all admonish us to never forget. No, we will never forget. We’ll not forget for the sake of the victims, for our own sake, and for the sake of future generations.”
Dachau, which is about 10 miles from Munich, was the first Nazi concentration camp opened in Germany.
The ceremony is one of several that have taken place at Nazi camps throughout Europe during this 70th year since the end of World War II.
The main gate of the camp, bearing the sign “Arbeit macht frei,” or work sets you free, was stolen last year and was recreated by a German blacksmith.
More than 200,000 people were imprisoned in the camp and its satellite locations between 1933 and 1945. Some 28,000 prisoners died in the Dachau camp, and another 13,000 died at the external sites.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
