To identify with the victims and courage with the criminals - this means today's memory • Germany must support all of these, 75 years after the release of the last concentration camps

• German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and Holocaust survivor // Photo: Oren Ben Hakun

Gertrude Steinle was 21 when she saved her Jewish counterpart from Nazi killers. She passed away last month, the day before her 98th birthday. She was the last German to carry the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" still alive. This honorary degree was awarded to her for her courage. For its humanity.

The courage and humanity we need today. "Everyone who listens to a witness becomes a witness," Eli Wiesel once said. In order for the memory not to die with the witnesses, we must all become witnesses.

To do so, new forms of memory, digital, and essential are needed: new means of communication that allow us to relive the surviving memories. Electronic archives, where scientists from all over the world. Digital exhibits that touch people today, in the 21st century.

Germany must support all of these. This is the responsibility of German politics and German society as a whole. Warranty that never ends. It must be passed down from generation to generation so that future generations also become witnesses. 

So we decided a few days ago to continue supporting the Yad Vashem Memorial site for another ten years. Everyone who has ever stood there, in the Hall of Names, under the images of countless murderers, knows: every story, every name we save for oblivion, turns us into witnesses. Witness what happened. Witness what must never happen again. Witnesses who rise when Jews and Jews are again attacked on our streets. When open anti-Semitism is disguised as a criticism of Israel. 

Discovering identification with the victims and courage in front of the criminals - that means the memory of today. 75 years after the release of the last concentration camps.



Heiko Mas is Germany's foreign minister