Holocaust Remembrance Day marks 25 years

Since 1996, survivors of the Nazi regime and world leaders have been invited to address the German Bundestag each year on January 27 to commemorate the Holocaust. Often, they focus on contemporary issues.

Genocide: Is this the appropriate word to describe the systematic annihilation of 6 million Jews between 1939 and 1945? Clearly, it does not go far enough.

In Israel, "Shoah," meaning "catastrophe" or "great misfortune," is used to describe the event. And outside the Jewish state, this crime against humanity is called the Holocaust, derived from the Greek for "sacrificially burned."

The attempt to adequately put this betrayal of humanity perpetrated by Germans into words will always be a challenge. This is also reflected in the official designation of the "Day of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism," which was introduced by then-German President Roman Herzog.

At the launch, President Herzog said that "Victims of the Holocaust" would have been "too narrow a term, as Nazi racial policies affected more people than just the Jews." The chosen date was January 27, the day the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet soldiers in 1945.

On this day in 1998, Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer addressed the Bundestag, the German parliament. Bauer, who had been born in Prague in 1926, recalled other genocides that shaped the 20th century: Rwanda in 1994, Cambodia from 1975-79 and Armenia in 1915-16.

All of these genocides were perpetrated in specific, although sometimes large, territories. But Bauer said "the murder of Jews was universal, intended to be worldwide." And he warned that it could happen again, certainly not in the same form, but perhaps in a very similar way.

"And I can't tell you who will be the Jews and who will be the Germans the next time around," Bauer warned.

Elie Wiesel: 'How to understand the cult of hatred and death?'

In 2000, for the first time, an Auschwitz survivor addressed members of parliament and guests on the memorial day: Elie Wiesel.

"I speak without hatred or bitterness," the Romanian-born US-naturalized writer said. "Will my words hurt you? How can you understand the cult of hatred and death that reigned in your country?"

Wiesel did not believe in

Roses lie with a note saying "#weremember", at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Former President of Germany Roman Herzog launched the Holocaust Remembrance Day