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 go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
