YOU invited me as the German Ambassador to speak at a service in a Jewish synagogue one day after Yom HaShoah, the Jewish Holocaust Remembrance Day. I consider this an honour but even more as a great responsibility.

We remember today the unspeakable suffering and death of six million European Jews who were tortured and murdered by the National Socialists. It was a systematic, bureaucratically planned and industrially perfected genocide. In an unimaginable extermination programme Jews and other victims were exploited, tortured, humiliated and murdered in death factories and concentration camps. The holocaust represents a collapse of all civilised values which remains unparalleled to this day.

It was planned in the name of the German nation, it was organised and executed by Germans, and Germany bears the moral responsibility, the responsibility before history for this crime against humanity. It fills us with deep sadness and shame and always will. I bow my head before the victims, the few survivors and their families.

It took a long time for Germans to take responsibility openly and unambiguously for the past. After the war, many Germans had a hard time looking back at the past. Most still had no awareness or no full awareness of the unspeakable crimes committed by the National Socialists.

This changed dramatically only in the 70s and 80s, when more and more Germans began to ask about and discuss publicly the barbarian history of Jewish persecution that emanated from Germany, and when this dark chapter was introduced into school curriculums.

From then on many things have contributed over the past decades to sharpening our awareness of the past, such as the vigils at the former sites of the synagogues, or in synagogues which have been built over the last two decades, the ringing of church bells on November 9, the ceremonies and many monuments of remembrance, and last but certainly not least, the many exchange programmes with Israel.

Today we can say with some justification that Germany has found her way to an unambiguous confrontation with National Socialism, to appropriate forms of remembrance and to understand and assume the responsibilities involved.

Today Germans and Jews are separated and united at the same time. We are separated by Germany’s historical guilt and by the distinction between who were the perpetrators and who were the victims. The past cannot be undone.

But I am grateful that we have come a long way to realise that what unites us today is more important than what separates us, and that this has opened a door to a common future for both Germans and Jews.

* We are united in the remembrance of the victims and their suffering.

* We are united in the revulsion of what human beings can do to one another.

* We are united in the horror that so many people could look away when their neighbours and friends were subjected to injustice and suffering, that only very few showed courage and offered resistance.

* Yet, above all, we are united in our striving for “never again”, in the responsibility for preserving the memory of the past and for a shared, more humane future. It is our responsibility to fight anti-Semitism, racism and any form of political, religious or otherwise motivated and disguised intolerance.

We are united in assuring active remembrance, and one important expression of Germany’s active remembrance is our special responsibility to the State of Israel. Let me cite what Chancellor Angela Merkel said when she spoke to the members of the Knesset:

“Every German Government and every German Chancellor before me has shouldered Germany’s special historical responsibility for Israel’s security. This historical responsibility is part of my country’s raison d’être. For me as German Chancellor, therefore, Israel’s security will never be open to negotiation.”

Let me just add that this basic principle of German foreign policy is not subject to politics of the day, and is not subject to unsustainable and wrong opinions expressed by anybody in Germany.

There are other expressions of our active remembrance which gain special importance at a time when the last personal witnesses of the holocaust are leaving us.

After Israel and the USA, Germany has become the third principal centre for Holocaust research and education worldwide. We stand united in the frontline in combating holocaust denial which in Germany is a punishable offence (since 1994).

This is also helped by the fact that Jewish life in Germany is not only a memory, but again living reality. The Jewish community of about 650,000 before the war dwindled to barely more than 15,000 after the holocaust and it was unclear how many of them – if any – would remain in Germany. It has grown again to some 240,000 Jews mainly from the former Soviet Union, more than 100,000 organised in Jewish communities. Today it is the third largest Jewish community in Europe. The golden dome of the synagogue in the centre of Berlin, the holocaust memorial and the holocaust museum are today as much a symbol of Berlin as the Reichstag building and the Brandenburg Gate.

We are grateful that in Germany, despite the holocaust, it has become normal again to grow up with Jews and to experience Jewish life up close.

We are grateful that Germans and Jews have succeeded in starting over again while keeping the memory of the holocaust alive.

The holocaust remains the darkest hour in Germany’s history and in the relationship between Germans and Jews. But we are grateful that it has not become the final chapter in our shared history. The National Socialists did not have the last word after all.

Remembrance of the holocaust remains Germany’s moral responsibility which we owe first of all to the victims of the holocaust, the survivors and their families, but which we also owe ourselves.

If we do not want to enter blindly into the future, we have to know who we are and where we come from. For Germany and Germans, that includes inescapably remembering the holocaust and accepting our special responsibility for fighting evil whenever it shows itself.

The above is an edited version of a speech by German Ambassador Josef Beck, on the occasion of Yom Ha Shoah, the Jewish Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Jewish Synagogue in Kingston, on March 20.