Herzog and Schreinmeier visited the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp
Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp today, following in the footsteps of his father, who helped liberate the camp as a British Army officer in 1945.
Recounting the first moments of Haim Herzog in the camp - Isaac's father and a former Israeli president - the Israeli head of state said he "stood on a wooden box, shouting in Yiddish in front of hundreds of skeletons".
"Jews, Jews, are there any Jews left alive?" Are there any Jews still alive on Earth?" Herzog recalls his father saying.
The camp is one of the most notorious of World War II, where over 50.000 people were killed, including Anne Frank, a German girl from a Jewish family from Frankfurt who wrote diaries describing the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II.
In 1945, the camp was full of barracks which the British Army immediately set alight to prevent the spread of disease. Today there are huge mass graves covered with grass, on which small stones are placed as a tribute to the dead.
Standing next to the stone that Haim Herzog brought from Jerusalem in 1987, when he became the first Israeli president to visit Germany since World War II, his son Isaac urged both countries to continue the fight against anti-Semitism.
- It is our duty in the name of the past, he said. - Israel and Germany must jointly defend the homeland for the Jewish people, its future, security and improvement and fight against every form of anti-Semitism, Herzog said during a visit to the memorial area north of Hanover.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier emphasized that the memory of the crimes committed against the Jews during the National Socialist regime must not stop.
– The Holocaust is a painful part of German history and must not be repeated or forgotten, said Steinmeier.
The German president also pointed to the need to fight against anti-Semitism, which, he said, is still more than present in Germany.
Herzog's visit to the camp ended a three-day visit to Germany, during which he participated in the commemoration of the slain Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and gave a speech in the Bundestag thanking Germany for its support of Israel. .
