Scholz speaks of ongoing German responsibility for Holocaust on 80th anniversary

Chancellor Olaf Scholz addresses Germans on their responsibility for the “civilizational rupture” of the Holocaust, in a speech marking 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz.

“Every single person in our country bears responsibility, regardless of their own family history, regardless of the religion or birthplace of their parents or grandparents,” he says.

“We must not and will not accept any relativization. And we will also remind each new generation of its ongoing responsibility.”

Scholz says this remains an ongoing challenge in schools and universities, in migrant integration courses, and in everyday life.

Monday marks 80 years since the World War II liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in what was Nazi-occupied Poland. Auschwitz has become a symbol of the Holocaust murders of six million European Jews, one million of whom died at the site between 1940 and 1945, along with more than 100,000 non-Jews.

Scholz says these were “more than a million unique people, individuals, wives and husbands, boys and girls, grandmothers and grandfathers. They were gassed, shot, they died of hunger, forced labor and medical experiments.” He honors other victims, including Sinti and Roma, political opponents of the Nazi regime, homosexuals, the sick and people with disabilities.

Scholz says “The uniqueness of the Shoah must be communicated again… to counteract the countless attempts to falsify and relativize history.”