German president warns of far-right efforts to relativise Nazi-era guilt

Germany must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and far-right efforts to relativise its Nazi-era guilt, President Frank Walter Steinmeier has warned.

He was in Belarus to attend the opening of a memorial at Maly Trostenets camp, just outside Minsk, where at least 60,000 Jews were murdered.

The camp was set up in 1941 as a concentration camp, and a year later became a death camp. Among those who died in Trostenets were around 30,000 Jews from nearby Minsk, as well as deported Jews from Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia. The Nazis began destroyed evidence of their crimes and left behind only ash-filled mass graves. Largely forgotten in the Soviet era, Friday’s visit was the first ever by a German head of state.

“Trostenets has preoccupied me for a long time because it seemed forgotten and because there was little readiness on the Belarussian side to create a memorial for the Jews murdered there,” said Mr Steinmeier.

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As well as telling of Jewish victims, the memorial explains how the Nazis razed hundreds of villages and their populations. One quarter of the Belarussian population perished from Nazi aggression and the second World War.

The president said Germany’s obligation to remember its past remained, even if the means of memorialising changed with the passing of the last eye-witnesses.

Mr Steinmeier termed “unbearable” efforts by politicians of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) who in recent months have criticised Germany’s post-war memorialising as a “guilt cult” or the 12-year Nazi period as “bird shit” when viewed against Germany’s long history.

Reputation

“Those who talk like this don’t really know how much of the recognition and reputation Germany has built up in the last decades with its neighbours is destroyed in this way,” said Mr Steinmeier. “And we shouldn’t forget: the irresponsible word can lead to the irresponsible deed.”

While a huge majority of Germans remain aware of their responsibilities, he said a recent series of anti-Semitic incidents were a timely reminder of a responsibility all Germans had to ensure Jews live without fear “as a self-evident part of German society”.

The president said he was concerned by cultural anti-Semitism among refugees and asylum seekers from northern Africa and the Middle East. However, he was more worried by the home-grown variety such as in a “so-called song” mocking Auschwitz prisoners that won a leading German music prize. “Incidents like that,” he said, “show me how much there is still to do.”