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| Berlin commemorates Warsaw uprising
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The state of Berlin’s secretary of the interior, Ehrhart Koerting
Photo: Berlin Government
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Jewish communities throughout Germany commemorated the 63rd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
The largest tribute took place at the Jewish Community Centre in Berlin.
Representatives of the diplomatic corps, local and federal politicians, rabbis and church leaders took part in the hour-long commemoration ceremony. Gideon Joffe, chairman of Berlin’s Jewish community, gave an extra special welcome to the Holocaust survivors who had come to witness the speeches, readings, candle lighting, music and wreath-laying.
Right to defence
For the first time, leaders of the Central Council of Sinti and Roma (gypsies) in Germany, also a persecuted group during the Nazi period, attended the annual ceremony.
Joffe summarised the events of the uprising and stressed that Jews “have an inherent right to defend themselves against oppression”.
“It is particularly important for us to defend ourselves, especially in these times, when people continue to threaten our existence and that of Israel,” Joffe said.
He insinuated that Iran’s president is currently today’s greatest threat to Jews and Israel. He called on the German government to ban President Ahmadinejad from entering Germany during the Football World Cup until he stops denying the Holocaust and stops calling for the destruction of the Israeli state.
“There is no room for a person like Ahmadinejad in Germany today,” Joffe said.
The state of Berlin’s secretary of the interior, Ehrhart Koerting, was visibly moved when he told onlookers that he was “honoured to have been invited to talk”. He confirmed the Berlin government’s commitment to back initiatives that support Jewish life.
Moving performances
Special guests included Imre Kertesz and Nizza Tobi.
Kertesz, the Hungarian Nobel Prize laureate, read from his book “Roman eines Schicksallosen” (Story of One Without a Destiny). As in all his works, the survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald read passages that were filled with elements that mirrored his own experience during his imprisonment.
Nizza Thobi performed music that is rarely heard in public. She sang non-traditional Hebrew and Yiddish songs that were composed by victims of the Shoah during their internment in ghettos and concentration camps. Thobi’s repertory highlighted courage, rebellion, pain, mourning, strength and love elements that were so prevalent in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Following Thobi’s performance, diplomats and politicians placed wreathes at the small holocaust memorial, located adjacent to the Jewish Community Centre, following a special prayer conducted by Rabbi Chaim Rozwaski.
The official ceremony ended with the start of the Jewish Student Union’s annual 27-hour reading-marathon of all 55,696 names of Berlin Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
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