Here is a translation of a German news report:
Germany cannot afford to reject refugees, says Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of German Jews (Zentralrat der deutschen Juden). It (Germany) has brought “evil” upon others and is indebted to other nations.
According to the President of the GJCC, Josef Schuster, Germany is “the last land that can afford to reject refugees and persecuted people.” It has brought so much evil [“perdition”] upon the world and it is deeply in debt with so many countries, he said on Sunday during a memorial ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp at Dachau on Apr 29, 1945.
He asks himself, when today, again, some citizens hunt [agitate] against refugees or talk in a demeaning way about Jews, how deep the need for protecting human dignity is anchored in people´s minds.
Dachau´s prisoners would have known, Schuster noted, how fast human civilization could be laid into ruins. “How a people from a supposedly [sic!!] cultured nation (Kulturvolk] became barbarians.” Fundamental values such as tolerance, respect, humility and responsibility should always be re-exercized and defended.
“I get sick when I see that in Dresden not less than 10,000 people cheer up an Islamophobe and right-wing populist like Geert Wilders” (he spoke there once), said the doctor from Würzburg. Growing numbers of refugees and Islamic terrorism are “not a reason to fight for a Christian-Jewish West without Muslims”, or to threaten to murder politicians.
Schuster said that Holocaust survivors´ memories are nowadays “more precious than ever.” What happened moves always further away; for many young people, NS terror and the Shoah are “only historical dates/facts” without a personal relationship (to them): “Distance grows, and empathy (levels) drops — except when you set foot on this place” [i.e., Dachau].
On these grounds, visiting a concentration camp memorial should be compulsory for all junior high school students. He hopes that his suggestion will be discussed again in the Bavarian Parliament. Chancellor Angela Merkel participated also in the ceremony. The Dachau concentration camp was created on March 22, 1933. Around 200,000 people from all over Europe were kept prisoners in Dachau and in several of its satellite camps , at least 43,000 were murdered there.
