Meeting with Polish and Israeli Presidents on the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier apologized for Nazi crimes on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In a ceremony held today with the Presidents of Poland and Israel, Andrzej Duda and Izchak Herzogand Steinmeier recognized his country’s responsibility for the extermination of the Jews and expressed his gratitude for the reconciliation between the two countries and Germany.
Also for the invitation to a ceremony in which the German head of state had never attended and which Steinmeier described as a “Infinitely Precious Gift”. “It is with sadness and humility that I appear before you today to ask your forgiveness for the crimes you have committed
the Germans committed here,” he said in a speech in front of the Ghetto Heroes’ Monument in the Polish capital.
Steinmeier acknowledged that the Germans meticulously planned and carried out the crime against humanity of the Shoah “They persecuted, enslaved and murdered the Jews
Europeto the Jews of Warsaw, with a cruelty and inhumanity for which we have no words.” He assured that the Germans are aware of their responsibility and the mission that the survivors and the dead have left them.
“We accept it. For us Germans, the responsibility towards our history knows no end. It remains a memory and mission in the present and in the future,” said the Federal President, for whom the most important lesson of German history was “Never again!” And never again, that means that there will be no criminal war of aggression in Europe like Russia’s against Ukraine may. “We support Ukraine humanitarian, politically and militarily, together with Poland and ours
allies”said Steinmeier.
The President pointed out that those who rose up against the German occupiers in 1943 were “the heroes of Israel, the heroes of the Jews of the whole world, they are the heroes of Poland”.
and the Poles”.
Duda stressed that the courage of the insurgents set an example for Israeli and Polish soldiers guarding their countries’ borders.
For his part Herzog emphasized the aspect of reconciliationThe Jews who were murdered at the time could not have imagined “that we would be here 80 years later, the Presidents of Poland, Israel and Germany, honoring their heroism and swearing together in their holy memory: Never again!”
The Warsaw Ghetto was established by the German occupiers in the fall of 1940. About 450,000 people were trapped there.. In 1942, the Nazis began deporting people to death and labor camps. Between July and September between 250,000 and 280,000 people were deported or killed.
When SS units marched into the ghetto on April 19, 1943, the uprising of the only Jewish resistance began, lightly armed. The fighting lasted until mid-May. More than 56,000 Jews were killed or deported to concentration and extermination camps.
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