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| Europe |
| The Day Freedom Knocked at the Gates of Buchenwald |
| 2005-04-11 |
| Sixty years ago, United States Army troops liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, the former home to Goethe and Schiller and a place where German culture enjoyed its pinnacle and society hit its nadir. On Sunday, more than 500 survivors came together for what will likely be their last reunion at the memorial site. Now many are taking steps to ensure that their memories of what happened here will endure, even after their deaths. "Soon there won't be any living witnesses of the Nazi camps," said Jorge Semprun, author, former Spanish Minister of Culture and Buchenwald survivor, who once bore the prisoner number 44904. With the generation of survivors now dying of old age, the burden of remembrance is being passed on to a younger generation. Semprun is convinced those memories will persist: "The Jewish memory of the camps will be long-lasting and enduring," he said. But that will require a new generation to become caretakers and administrators of those memories. To that end, Paul Spiegel, who heads the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has called upon the younger generations to take the "baton of memory." He has proposed that young Jews should "adopt" a victim of the concentration camps and to become the living custodian of that person's memory after he or she passes away. I can't say much today. Only thank you, thank you, to those who gave their lives so that we would live. I raise my glass to the heroes of the Third Army. And a special salute to you, General Patton! You know why! |
| Posted by:True German Ally |