‘Antisemitism is poisoning our society’ says Olaf Scholz at rebuilt synagogue that was destroyed 85 years ago and is again target of firebombing
There could hardly have been a more powerfully symbolic setting for a ceremony to mark the 85th anniversary of the 1938The place of worship in the heart of Berlin was largely destroyed in the violence that exploded on the night of 9 November that year, when Nazi thugs carried out murderous, state-sponsored attacks on Jewish property and homes.
Berlin senator Franziska Giffey greets 102-year-old Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer after the ceremony at Beth Zion synagogue to mark the 85th anniversary of the 1938 Nazi pogrom.Wearing a kippah, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, gave an emotional speech in which he condemned the spate of antisemitic attacks across the country and pledged to protect the nation’s Jews from a “shameful” wave of “intolerance and inhumanity”.
Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews, said anyone seeking to understand why the attack on Israel had caused such trauma among German Jews had to be aware of “what is going on in Jewish souls 85 years after thewhen Stars of David are painted on Jewish houses and Jewish businesses are attacked once more, when arson attacks are carried out on synagogues again like they were here just weeks ago.
The resulting pessimism has prompted many organisers of events around this anniversary to adopt the slogan ‘‘Never Again’ is Now’, an adaptation ofAcross the country at synagogues and Jewish institutes, and at sites of former destroyed synagogues, politicians, Jewish leaders and other Germans held commemorations on Thursday.
At the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, at an event called ‘Never Again Is Now’, the Nobel prize winning laureate Herta Müller was one of several intellectuals to recite from the works of the philosopher Hannah Arendt and other Jewish writers. She was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, while other family members, including her parents, were deported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.memorial plaques set into the pavement – marking her and her relatives’ names and the dates of their flights, deportations and murders.
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