On Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27, the Internationaler Bund (IB) warns against the trivialization of National Socialist crimes. Since the end of the 2nd World War there has been this again and again publicly. Currently, however, the relativization or even denial of persecution, forced labor as well as murder of Jewish and other people between 1933 and 1945 has reached a sad new peak.
One of the reasons for this lies in the current agitated social climate. In view of the behavior of some people who are currently publicly trivializing the crimes of the Nazis, the IB pleads for more enlightenment and civic education. Only those who have understood how inhuman and unyielding a dictatorship intervenes in private and public life can distinguish between it and a functioning democracy. Only with the appropriate knowledge are people impervious to absurd, sometimes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
January 27 was declared the official Holocaust Memorial Day in Germany in 1996 by the then Federal President Roman Herzog. On that date in 1945, Soviet Russian soldiers liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. In the meantime, many other countries have also adopted this day of remembrance.
"We can be happy to live in a democracy where all opinions are accepted. However, the rejection of dictatorships must be part of the common value base without any ifs and buts! After all, the persecution and murder of dissidents is still a sad reality in many parts of the world today," says IB Executive Board Chairman Thiemo Fojkar.
