This Friday marks the 75th anniversary of Germany's liberation from the Nazi dictatorship by the Allies. Actually, a state act was planned for this occasion. Due to the corona, the memory is smaller.
Berlin (dpa) - Before the official commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, leftists, Greens and unions thought of the liberation of Germany from National Socialism.
"The unconditional surrender of Germany was the first step towards freedom and human rights for our country, even if it should take until 1989 until these were finally won in eastern Germany as well," said the Greens parliamentary group leaders in the Bundestag, Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Anton Hofreiter. The chairwoman of the left in the Foreign Affairs Committee, Sevim Dagdelen, laid a wreath at the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin's Tiergarten.
Dagdelen missed such a gesture from the federal government: "Chancellor Angela Merkel's laying a wreath at a Soviet memorial in Berlin would have been an important sign of recognition and appreciation on this historic day," she told the German Press Agency in Berlin. "To refuse to thank Russia for the liberation from German fascism based on a small check of daily politics is shameful and forgotten about history."
In the Bundestag, the Left called on the government to make May 8 a nationwide legal memorial day. However, the motion did not find a majority on Thursday. In addition to the left, only the Greens agreed with him.
Minister of Culture Monika Grütters (CDU) said the Germans would never forget the suffering and misery they had brought to other peoples with the Second World War. "We know the lessons from our difficult history. Hate gave rise to the dictatorship and the dictatorship led to war."
The leaders of the German state will commemorate the liberation from National Socialism and the end of World War II in Europe 75 years ago in Berlin this Friday. A wreath is planned at the Neue Wache, the central memorial of the Federal Republic for the victims of war and tyranny. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will give a speech.
Chancellor Merkel and the Presidents of the Bundestag, Federal Council and Federal Constitutional Court, Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), Dietmar Woidke (SPD) and Andreas Voßkuhle will also take part in the commemorative event. Steinmeier had originally ordered a state act for May 8, the highest possible form of state appreciation of an event. There has only been one such act of government on May 8, 1995 under Federal President Roman Herzog in 1995. The event on Friday in front of the Reichstag building with 1,600 guests was canceled due to the corona pandemic.
FDP general secretary Linda Teuteberg called the planned commemoration a "worthy substitute" for the state act. "It is an important sign that after almost two months of lockdown there is now a worthy commemoration of the end of the Second World War," she told the dpa. "It would have been inappropriate to forego it."
Goering-Eckardt and Hofreiter called May 8 a day "that fills us with gratitude to the countries that have made countless human sacrifices to end the German war of annihilation and liberate Germany and the world from the National Socialist dictatorship".
The DGB chairman, Reiner Hoffmann, declared that war was never again, and fascism was never again the central lesson from the dark years of fascist reign of terror. "We have to keep the memory alive - especially in times when growing oblivion to history is playing into the hands of nationalists and racists again."
Request by the left faction on May 8th
