In Berlin Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee, made a statement in remembrance of the upcoming 85th anniversary of the November Pogrom, which started on the night of 9 November 1938. He said:

"Even 85 years after the 9th of November 1938, the survivors of the Holocaust still sense the oppressive proximity of ‘those times’. How much time has passed, when in these days the apartments of Jewish people in Germany are marked with graffiti symbols, and restaurants supposedly belonging to Jewish people are spat on? How much time has passed, when people are blindly following anti-Semitic slogans and chants of hate speech in demonstrations, and marching together with people whose declared aim has always been to wipe the state of Israel off the map? And which time will come, when more and more people in Germany can imagine voting for a proven far-right extremist party in the next elections?

The survivors of the Holocaust are focusing strongly on this 9 November, and they are filled with feelings of sorrow, outrage and protest: The fact that on 9 November 2023 Jewish people in Germany and other European countries are being threatened, leaves them stunned, and they are asking themselves whether their descendants in Germany will one day be as alone and abandoned as they themselves once were. For this reason the survivors of the Holocaust say thank you on this 9 November 2023 to all of the people who stand together with them to oppose anti-Semitism. They are defending democracy.”