Susanne Wasum-Rainer, the German Ambassador to Israel, and Jeremy Issacharoff, the Israeli Ambassador to Germany, have published a joint appeal against Holocaust denial, Der Tagesspiegel reported Thursday (Appell der israelischen und deutschen Botschafter gegen Holocaustleugnung).
in a guest article for the Tagesspiegel and the Israeli daily Maariv, published on the 80th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference where high-level Nazi officials met at a villa on the shores of Berlin’s Wannsee lake to discuss the systematic murder of as many as 11 million European Jews in a “final solution,” the two ambassadors denounced the fact that the reality of the Shoah is still being disputed and that its exceptional historical impact is being doubted. The denial and trivialization of crimes against humanity are not only widespread among political radicals, but have become a social and international phenomenon.
For this reason, Israel and Germany want to jointly initiate a resolution at the United Nations on Thursday and call on political leaders worldwide for their support.
“This resolution is meant to be a sign of hope and inspiration for all states and societies that stand up for diversity and tolerance, strive for reconciliation, and understand that remembering the Holocaust is essential to preventing such crimes from happening again,” the two ambassadors write.
The denial of the historical facts of the Holocaust is not only an attack on the victims of the extermination and their descendants, on Jews all over the world, and the State of Israel. It is also an attack “on the basic condition of peaceful societies and peaceful coexistence worldwide,” they argued.
The ambassadors also make proposals for concrete measures to combat Holocaust denial. These include a uniform definition of antisemitism, investment in education, awareness-raising, and measures to prevent the questioning and relativization of the Holocaust on social media.
The UN General Assembly has designated January 27, the day the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated, as the annual international day of commemoration honoring victims of the Holocaust, also known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that even 80 years after the Wannsee Conference, it was crucial to remember that German diplomats were complicit in Nazi crimes.
“Officials from the Foreign Office who put themselves at the service of crimes and genocide by the Nazi regime are also to blame for their suffering,” she said.
She vowed that “We will never forget what Germany did” to the victims of the Holocaust.