Akunis to Bundestag head: I can’t forgive Germans
Likud MK Ophir Akunis used a Holocaust memorial ceremony at the Knesset on Thursday to criticize Germany.
In front of German Bundestag President Bärbel Bas, Akunis made a point of speaking in English when he told about the town where his family lived in Europe.
“Ninety-seven percent of the community (was murdered), Madame Speaker,” he said.
Akunis then added in Hebrew: “Others can forgive the Germans. I do not forget or forgive.”
Bas lit a memorial candle in memory of Irma Nathan, a woman from her hometown who was murdered in the Holocaust.
Nathan was the head of the welfare committee of the Jewish community in Duisburg until she was deported 80 years ago to the concentration camp Izbica, where she was murdered.
“I humbly lower my head in shame before the victims of the Holocaust,” Bas said at the ceremony. “We cannot forget and we will not forget. Our historic guilt brings with it obligations. We must fight with determination against antisemitism in all its forms, and keep alive the memory and pass it to the younger generations.”
Knesset Speaker Mickey Levy (Yesh Atid) told Bas that her visit symbolized the strong ties between the people of Israel and Germany, which he said are based on the historic responsibility that Germany took for the crimes of the Holocaust and for the security of Israel.
At Yad Vashem, Bas heard about the Nathan family, who lived next door to where Bas lives today. In November 1938, following Kristallnacht,
Ferdinand Nathan was arrested and incarcerated in Dachau. After his release, he and his wife, Irma, realized they had no future in Germany and began preparing to save their two children, Ruth and Alfred, from certain doom.
In early 1939, Ruth and Alfred were sent to Amsterdam, while their parents remained behind. Due to the outbreak of war, Irma and Ferdinand found themselves cut off from their children, and in 1942 were deported to the Izbica Ghetto and were never heard from again. Their children were deported in 1943 from Westerbork to Sobibor, and were murdered shortly after their arrival.
Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan presented this research, including relevant documentation found in Yad Vashem’s archives, to Bas. She was visibly moved by the story, and after attending the main ceremony in Yad Vashem’s Warsaw Ghetto Square, she filled out a page of testimony for Irma Nathan. Irma’s name was read aloud in the “Unto Every Person There is a Name” ceremony, with Bas attending.
“Germans cut short the lives of six million Jews,” Bas said. “I think of the dead with sadness and shame. Germans denied the right of so many Jewish women, men and children to live. Nowadays, anyone who tells the stories of those murdered restores the humanity of the millions of victims. We must all do our part to preserve their memory.”
The page of testimony filled out by Bas will be added to the more than 2,800,000 pages of testimony collected by Yad Vashem over the past seven decades.