BUNDESTAG: Moving speech by Marcel Reif! With these words he moved Annalena Baerbock to tears During the Bundestag's memorial service for the victims of National Socialism, Holocaust survivor Eva Szepesi and Marcel Reif, the son of a survivor, called for more humanity and opposition to racism. "Anyone who remains silent is complicit," said Szepesi in the Bundestag, referring to growing hatred of Jews and right-wing extremism. "The Shoah did not begin with Auschwitz, it began with words - and it began with society's silence and turning a blind eye," said the 91-year-old, who survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Marcel Reif appealed to parliamentarians with his father's words: "Be human." In his speech, the well-known sports journalist recounted that his father, a Polish Jew who was rescued from a Nazi deportation train, never spoke about what he had experienced. "We should not, we were not allowed to, assume that every postman, baker and tram driver was a possible murderer of our grandparents," said Reif, whose grandparents were murdered by the National Socialists. He accepted this "warm, cozy cloak of silence," but later understood that his father had spoken and left a legacy in this sentence: "Be human." Szepesi, who comes from Hungary, spoke about the horror of the Holocaust at the Bundestag's memorial service, which was traditionally also attended by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and representatives of all other constitutional bodies. After the Nazis occupied Hungary, Szepesi's Jewish mother sent the then 11-year-old to flee with her aunt in the hope that she could escape the deportations. At the end of 1944, she was deported anyway. "In the overcrowded cattle car, the air became thinner and thinner, my hunger became more and more tormenting, my fear grew greater and greater," she described the horror. Szepesi, now 12 years old, comes to Auschwitz, pretends to be 16, and experiences the liberation by the Soviet army, completely exhausted, on a bed in the extermination camp. "At some point, my lips, burning from fever, felt a hand feeding me cold snow," she reported. "It was January 27, 1945 - and I was alive." It was only years later that she learned that her mother and her brother, who was eight at the time, had been taken to Auschwitz a few months before her and murdered in the gas chamber immediately after their arrival. Since the then Federal President Roman Herzog declared the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp a day of remembrance, the memorial service has been held in the Bundestag around the date. It is a constant reason to call for attention and resistance to new forms of intolerance and misanthropy. Against the backdrop of the strong support of the AfD, which is at least partly right-wing extremist, reports of plans by right-wing extremist networks to expel people with a history of immigration from Germany and the increase in anti-Semitic attacks in Germany since Hamas' attack on Israel, the appeals this year were even more urgent. Szepesi said she wanted people to remember not only the murdered victims of the Holocaust on memorial days, but also the survivors. "They need protection now." She complained about a "loud silence from the middle of society" and "conversations that begin with 'yes, but'." It was only 50 years after the end of the Second World War that Szepesi began to speak about her experiences. Never has it been more important to bear witness than now, she said to the Bundestag, "because 'never again' is now." Bundestag President Bärbel Bas (SPD) said that "never again" remains a mandate for society as a whole, regardless of what one's own parents, grandparents or great-grandparents did and suffered - "or where they come from". Hatred of Jews is not just a problem of the past. "Anti-Semitism is a problem of the present," said Bas. #bundestag #reif #baerbock #weltnachrichtensender Subscribe to the WELT YouTube Channel / weltvideotv WELT DOKU Channel / weltdoku WELT Podcast Channel / weltpodcast WELT Netzreporter Channel / dienetzreporter The WELT news livestream http://bit.ly/2fwuMPg The top news on WELT.de http://bit.ly/2rQQD9Q The media library on WELT.de http://bit.ly/2Iydxv8 WELT news channel on Instagram / welt.nachrichtensender WELT on Instagram / welt On a personal note: Due to the high volume of irrelevant and offensive posts, we are currently unable to accept any more comments. Thank you for your understanding - the WELT team created Video 2024