Peres in parliament
January 27, 2010
Israeli President Shimon Peres gave a powerful and emotional speech to the German parliament Bundestag on Wednesday. While the number of Holocaust survivors were "gradually departing from the world of the living," there were people who took part "in the most odious activity on earth - that of genocide" still living on German and European soil, as well as in other parts of the world, he said.
"My request is of you: please do everything to bring them to justice," the 86-year-old said. "This is not revenge in our eyes. This is an educational lesson."
Peres stressed that Israel was pursuing peace with its neighbors. At the same time, though, the nation would continue to ensure its own safety. He called on the international community to act in the nuclear dispute with Iran, calling the government in Tehran "a danger for the entire world" - and was strongly applauded by the parliamentarians and invited guests.
The speech marked the first time that an Israeli president has addressed the Bundestag on Holocaust Memorial Day. Wednesday is the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by Soviet soldiers on January 27, 1945.
Previously, the president of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert, had stressed the unique relationship between Germany and Israel.
"It has never been normal and doesn't have to become normal," Lammert said. Rather, it would remain shaped by the unparalleled historical experience, he said, adding that Germany carried a share of the responsibility for Israel.
"Some things are negotiable, but Israel's right to exist is not," Lammert said.
Past and future
Peres, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, also recalled his own history during the Holocaust in the deeply personal speech. He described the death of his beloved grandfather, his "guide and mentor." The rabbi was burned alive by the Nazis, who set fire to the synagogue in Peres' hometown of Vishneva, Belarus.
The president said that though the memory of the past tore his heart apart, he also had hope in the future, where hate and war would cease to exist. He addressed the youth of today.
"Young people cannot set any other goals than peace, reconciliation and love," he said. It was up to them to avoid a second Shoah. "The youth must learn to respect all cultures."
Later Wednesday, the president met with young people actively involved in working against anti-Semitism or in research into the history of Nazism. In a newspaper interview prior to his speech, Peres expressed concern that young Germans were not sufficiently aware of their country's historical obligation to Israel.
Agreement on Iran
On Tuesday, Peres, accompanied by German president Horst Koehler and Holocaust survivors of German descent, visited the Platform 17 memorial in Berlin. The memorial marks the place at the Grunewald station in the south of the city where the journey started for many thousands of German Jews who were murdered by the Nazis in the camps at Theresienstadt, Riga and Lodz.
Earlier Peres held talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel. The two leaders discussed Iran's anti-Israel stance. Peres stated that his "country had nothing against the Iranian people, but rather the Iranian regime."
Merkel said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attitude towards the Jewish state was "completely unacceptable."
sac/td/AP/AFP/dpa
Editor: Michael Lawton