January 26th, 2010

Chancellor Angela Merkel holds Reception in the Bundeskanzleramt:
Speech by Noach Flug, President of the IAC

Dear Federal Chancellor,

We sincerely thank you for giving us survivors and the young people this opportunity to link up history and the future today – 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz: we, the survivors, have tried throughout our lives to give our accounts to the world and especially young people, to tell what happened in Auschwitz and why it happened. We have done this as well for our families and friends who remained in that place of ashes.

We thank you, dear Federal Chancellor, above all for your resolute stand against all attempts by people – whether a head of state or a bishop – to deny the Holocaust. But also for your decisive support in enabling the now elderly survivors to live their old age fairly peacefully and in reasonable financial security.
And we thank the Federal Government for its so significant help towards preserving the Auschwitz Memorial.

Dear Federal Chancellor, you have touched our hearts. And you, the young German and Polish people from Volkswagen, have been working for 20 years to conserve the Memorial: this too gives us hope that our accounts and our stories are not being told in vain.

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