We commemorate the pogrom of 9 November 1938, which 85 years ago was intended to make the Jewish citizens of Nazi Germany understand with all harshness and brutality that there was no more survival for them in Germany. Around 400 people were killed or driven to suicide.
Now, 7 October 2023 is etched in history as one of these days of murderous violence and terror – once again with an anti-Semitic pogrom. This time with the brutal attack by the terrorist organisation Hamas on men, women and children in Israel – 1,400 people were murdered.
It is the most terrible and bitter day in the 75-year history of the State of Israel. The state that was to become a home for the persecuted after its foundation in 1948. Holocaust survivor Saul Friedländer writes about this in his current Israeli diary, in which he reckons with the dangerous policies of the government in recent years and virtually foresees the catastrophe:
„My parents never got their turn to receive a refugee certificate (for Palestine – I.W.). They were murdered in Auschwitz.“ „Whatever other moral justifications there may be for Zionism,“ Friedländer continues bitterly, „the only indisputable one, albeit based posteriori on the immigration to Palestine until 1945, is that this immigration, without anyone being able to foresee it, was not only a last refuge for some, but actually saved the lives of half a million European Jews. The children of these immigrants were born in Palestine and later in Israel; the development thereafter was what it was.“ (*)
Now the children and grandchildren of the survivors from Germany and Europe, who escaped the Nazis at the last minute after the pogrom of 9 November 1938 and were able to build a new life in Israel, have themselves become survivors here of all places.
The members of the terrorist organisation Hamas have not shied away from filming their attack, which was planned for years, and posting the inhumane acts on the Internet. How they invade the kibbutzim on the border with Gaza, literally slaughter men, women and children and take over 240 hostages, including many old people, children and thirty babies. It is hard to bear that elsewhere the images of this pogrom are greeted with jubilation and shared in the so-called social media.
The hostages are now in underground tunnels in the Gaza Strip, a system created by Hamas to attack Israel. Perhaps the only thing keeping people alive is the memory of their families and friends.
„As long as a person is remembered, he is not dead,“ recalled the lawyer and Holocaust survivor Fritz Bauer in a memorial speech to Anne Frank in 1963. (**) The Nazis had first deported the young girl to Auschwitz and then killed her in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp.
The year 1963 was also the year that the Auschwitz trial began, initiated by the lawyer Fritz Bauer. For him, Anne Frank epitomised the innocent victim. „We here commemorate Anne Frank,“ emphasised the lawyer and he continued: „How many others? As long as a person is remembered, they are not dead. A living person also needs to be commemorated, otherwise they will wither and die. Remembrance can keep a person alive or make it easier to die or be killed.“
Fritz Bauer thought about the loneliness of man. He himself survived concentration camp imprisonment, prison and almost 13 years as a refugee during the Nazi occupation in Denmark, where the Gestapo was looking for him, sometimes in hiding. In May 1949, shortly before the adoption of our Basic Law, he returned to Germany. From then on, his main concern was to remember those who helped the persecuted.
Bauer put himself in the place of the young Anne, who feared death, in her dream of her friend Lies, which reflected Anne’s fervent wish, according to Bauer, that „the world, the environment, not least the German environment“ should act like Lies in her dream. May the world around her „remember the humiliated and insulted, the weary and burdened with love and compassion and help them.“
Bauer’s speech was an intellectual and emotional endeavour. He wanted to break through the gloomy mood of exculpation that prevailed in the 1950s and early 1960s with its questioning taboos, to help the right and the duty to resist gain new validity. Again and again, the lawyer returned to the question. „Was it really so difficult to resist the inertia of the heart and at least give it some thought?“
For the lawyer, the girl Anne symbolises the millions and millions of people, regardless of origin, religion or nation, who died and continue to die as victims of violence. He says: „Anne Frank represents the persecuted, the unfortunate, wherever they lived and live, suffered and suffer, died and die because the state does or tolerates injustice.“
Today we can say that Anne’s resistance consisted of bearing witness to the injustice that happened to her through her diary. She wrote down her story of the struggle for survival in her own hand. Also the story of the people who helped her and her family. Now it is up to us to tell this story.
Today, on 9 November 2023, it is also up to us to remember the Hamas hostages in Gaza and to show solidarity with a truly brave Israeli civil society that is proving to be stable and resilient even in this bitter situation. It deserves our utmost respect and the brotherhood in our hearts that Fritz Bauer so hoped would finally emerge from the experience of the atrocities and terror of the years 1933 to 1945.
We stand in solidarity with the victims and survivors of the murderous terror of Hamas and sympathise with them. Based on Fritz Bauer’s legacy as the voice of the survivors and their resistance against National Socialism, we are at their side.
And let me also emphasise this at this point, without question and without qualification: we also stand in solidarity with and feel for the men, women and children of the Gaza Strip, whom Hamas uses as shields for its objectives and who are now becoming innocent victims and sufferers in their thousands in the Israeli retaliatory strikes against Hamas.
„Resistance must be practised“ – this call by Fritz Bauer after his years of struggle against the Nazi regime and against forgetting and repression after 1945/49 has accompanied me for many years. We chose this encouraging call from Bauer, which was aimed primarily at young people, months ago as the motif for today’s event.
I would like to conclude by saying that the brutal terrorist attack by Hamas has currently given Fritz Bauer’s call infinitely sad emphasis. Opposition and vigilance, open indignation and civil disobedience are needed:
– in the face of growing authoritarianism and the recognisable simplifications of media that are by no means impartial and objective,
– against religious extremism and the marginalisation of minorities, especially against the attempt to dismiss domestic anti-Semitism as an immigrant problem and to use it for a short-term tightening of asylum legislation,
– and against an oblivious nationalism, the flipside of which has always been hate-fuelled anti-Semitism.
Above all, I think we need to do one thing, namely listen much more to the Israeli and Palestinian voices and enter into dialogue with them much more. After all, imposing rules and bans and constantly introducing new laws will not change anything, just as enlightenment alone is not enough. Fritz Bauer, with whom I would like to end here, put it like this:
„Commandments and prohibitions that are to be kept require a primordial ground of feeling that all state powers, all social groups, all faculties are charged with creating. (…) A climate of tolerance and recognition is required, from which solidarity with all humanity arises.“ (***)
Speech at the invitation of the „Democracy-Respect-Diversity“ forum in Haltern. The title arose from a conversation about remembering as resistance and refers to Fritz Bauer, who said that resistance in the days of great injustice presupposes small-scale resistance in everyday life; resistance must be practised.
(*) Saul Friedländer, Looking into the Abyss. An Israeli Diary. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2023, p. 75.
(**) Cf. the following quotations in Fritz Bauer, „Lebendige Vergangenheit (1963)“, in: Ders, Die Humanität der Rechtsordnung. Selected Writings. Edited by Joachim Peres and Irmtrud Wojak. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1998, pp. 157-165.
(***) Cf. Fritz Bauer, „Nach den Wurzeln des Bösen fragen (1964)“, in: Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen , No. 4, 28th vol. (2025), pp. 120-125, here p. 124.
