{"id":186919,"date":"2021-06-18T15:40:08","date_gmt":"2021-06-18T14:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.recom.link\/?p=186919"},"modified":"2021-06-18T15:40:08","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T14:40:08","slug":"federal-president-frank-walter-steinmeier-to-mark-the-80th-anniversary-of-germanys-invasion-of-the-soviet-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.recom.link\/en\/federal-president-frank-walter-steinmeier-to-mark-the-80th-anniversary-of-germanys-invasion-of-the-soviet-union\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to mark the 80th anniversary of Germany\u2019s invasion of the Soviet Union"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier <\/span><\/span>to mark the 80th anniversary of Germany\u2019s invasion <\/span><\/span>of the Soviet Union <\/span><\/span>on 18 June 2021 <\/span><\/span><\/strong>in Berlin<\/strong> <\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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Boris Popov bears witness to 22 June 1941 as a young <\/span><\/span>infantryman. He is 19. His unit is stationed a few kilometres from Minsk. <\/span><\/span>After breakfast on the morning of 22 June, he relates, he and his <\/span><\/span>comrades went into the garden to sunbathe. He hears the first shots and <\/span><\/span>explosions from there, lying in the grass. It is a Sunday. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Two of his comrades are killed in the very first battles; his tank is <\/span><\/span>destroyed. The commander of the regiment gives the order to retreat. <\/span><\/span>The soldiers start to make their way back to Minsk on foot, unaware that <\/span><\/span>the German Wehrmacht is lying in wait there. And so Boris Popov is <\/span><\/span>captured by the Germans \u2013 ten kilometres outside Minsk, in the very <\/span><\/span>first days of the war. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The first camp that he is brought to is Drosdy, five kilometres north <\/span><\/span>of Minsk \u2013 it is hardly a camp, but rather a collection point in the open. <\/span><\/span>Images from a Deutsche Wochenschau broadcast from around this time <\/span><\/span>show the place in question: a vast patch of ground, surrounded by <\/span><\/span>barbed wire on which thousands upon thousands of Soviet soldiers and <\/span><\/span>officers are crouching in the dust or standing in the sweltering summer <\/span><\/span>heat. You can see many of them dressed in civilian working clothes, in <\/span><\/span>simple quilted jackets, while others are sporting uniform shirts with caps <\/span><\/span>atop their heads \u2013 young and middle-aged men. Boris Popov is <\/span><\/span>somewhere among that crowd. We hear the narrator of the Deutsche <\/span><\/span>Wochenschau say the following: \u201cThe faces of these sub-humans are <\/span><\/span>characterised by rapacity and murderousness.\u201d What we actually see are <\/span><\/span>the faces, wracked by hunger and thirst, of utterly exhausted prisoners. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Ten thousand prisoners fall victim to the so-called \u201cCommissar <\/span><\/span>Order\u201d in Drosdy alone. Supposed \u201cpolitical commissars\u201d of the Red Army were, in line with orders from the Wehrmacht, not to be treated <\/span>as prisoners of war, but rather (and I quote) to be \u201csummarily <\/span>executed\u201d. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Boris Antonovich Popov, a soldier and veteran of the Red Army, <\/span>died exactly one year ago, on 20 June 2020, at the age of 98. I did not <\/span>have the opportunity to meet him, but I did hear about his story, which <\/span>Boris Popov himself told us about in lectures and speeches and, most <\/span>recently, in a documentary by Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg five years <\/span>ago. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

You see him sitting on a bench in this film, at a park in Minsk where <\/span>he lived from 1950 onwards. Sitting there, he does not look like a man <\/span>in his nineties. He is old, to be sure, but without a trace of fatigue. Lively, <\/span>alert \u2013 he cuts a dashing figure. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

He was lucky. He survived the war. And we can count ourselves <\/span>lucky that he was able to tell us his story. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

His is the story of but one soldier. And the war that he tells us <\/span>about had started already two years previously with Germany\u2019s invasion <\/span>of Poland \u2013 two years in which the Second World War had brought <\/span>destruction, occupation and tyranny to large parts of Europe. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What now came to pass, what began on 22 June 1941, was an <\/span>unleashing of hatred and violence, the radicalisation of a war that <\/span>culminated in the madness of total annihilation. From day one, the <\/span>German military campaign was driven by hatred, by antisemitism and <\/span>anti-Bolshevism, as well as by a fanatical racist doctrine against the <\/span>Slavic and Asian peoples of the Soviet Union. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Those who waged this war killed people in every imaginable way, <\/span>with an unprecedented degree of brutality and cruelty. Those who were <\/span>responsible for it, who in their national fanaticism even invoked German <\/span>culture and civilisation, Goethe and Schiller, Bach and Beethoven, <\/span>betrayed all civilised values, violated all principles of humanity and law. <\/span>The German war against the Soviet Union was murderous barbarity. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As difficult as we may find it, we must call this to mind. <\/span>Remembering this inferno, this absolute enmity and the act of <\/span>dehumanising the other \u2013 remembering this continues to be an <\/span>obligation for us Germans and a memorial for the world. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers fell, starved to death or <\/span>were shot dead during the first few months of the war alone, in the <\/span>summer of 1941. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Immediately after the invasion by the German troops, the murder <\/span>of Jewish men, women and children by the firing squads of the <\/span>Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and the SS and their auxiliary troops got under <\/span>way.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of civilians in Ukraine, in Belarus, in the <\/span><\/span>Baltic States and in Russia fell victim to bombing attacks or were <\/span><\/span>relentlessly hunted down as partisans and murdered. Cities were <\/span><\/span>destroyed and villages burned to the ground. Old photographs show only <\/span><\/span>charred stone fireplaces rising in a devastated landscape. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

At the war\u2019s end, the death toll in the Soviet Union numbered some <\/span><\/span>27 million people. Twenty-seven million people were killed, murdered, <\/span><\/span>bludgeoned, starved or left to die as a result of forced labour by National <\/span><\/span>Socialist Germany. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Fourteen million of them were civilians. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

No one had to mourn more victims in this war than the peoples of <\/span><\/span>the then Soviet Union. And yet these millions are not as deeply etched <\/span><\/span>in our collective memory as their suffering and our responsibility <\/span><\/span>demand.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This war was a crime \u2013 a monstrous, criminal war of aggression <\/span><\/span>and annihilation. Those who travel to its theatres today, who encounter <\/span><\/span>people who bore the brunt of it, will be reminded of 22 June 1941 \u2013 <\/span><\/span>irrespective of whether there is a day of remembrance or memorial or <\/span><\/span>not. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Traces of this day are to be found among the elderly who <\/span><\/span>experienced it as children, and in the younger generation, in their <\/span><\/span>grandchildren and great-grandchildren. You can find them from the <\/span><\/span>coast of the White Sea in the north to Crimea in the south, from the <\/span><\/span>dunes of the Baltic in the west to Volgograd in the east. They are scars <\/span><\/span>of war, scars of destruction, scars of loss.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What remained were mass graves, brothers\u2019 graves, as people say <\/span><\/span>in Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The murdering continued in the hinterland. On 31 January 1942, <\/span><\/span>Wehrmacht soldier Paul Hohn, who was stationed in Berazino in what is <\/span><\/span>now Belarus, wrote the following in his diary: \u201cIt\u2019s 3 p.m. The shooting <\/span><\/span>of all Jews who still live here \u2012 962 people, women, old folk and children <\/span><\/span>\u2012 started an hour ago. (…). At long last. A commando of 20 men from <\/span><\/span>the Gestapo is carrying out the action. They are taking it in turns to <\/span><\/span>shoot in twos. The Jews walk in single file (…) through the snow to the <\/span><\/span>open grave, which they enter one by one and are shot lying down one <\/span><\/span>after another. (…) In this way, the plague is being eradicated. From the <\/span><\/span>window of my workplace, I can see the ghetto 500 metres away and <\/span><\/span>hear screams and shots clearly. It\u2019s a pity I\u2019m not taking part.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Every war brings devastation, death and suffering. And yet this <\/span><\/span>war was different. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It was an act of German barbarity. It cost millions of human lives, <\/span><\/span>laid waste to the continent and \u2013 as a consequence \u2013 divided the world <\/span><\/span>for decades. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The war and its legacy have also divided our memory, a division <\/span><\/span>that has yet to be overcome even three decades after the lifting of the <\/span><\/span>Iron Curtain. It continues to be a burden for the future. Changing this <\/span><\/span>state of affairs is our task, a task for which we urgently need to redouble <\/span><\/span>our efforts beyond borders \u2013 for the sake of the past, but, above all, for <\/span><\/span>the sake of a peaceful future for coming generations on this continent. <\/span><\/span>That is why we are here today, at a historic site, at a museum supported <\/span><\/span>by 17 institutions from four nations. Their four flags are flying in front of <\/span><\/span>this building. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

You can sense traces of the war even where its visible ones are <\/span><\/span>now obscured or concealed by the undergrowth of a fateful century, by <\/span><\/span>the years of Stalinism, the Cold War, the end of the Soviet Union. The <\/span><\/span>war remains tangible \u2013 like a scar that you run your fingers over. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But are we Germans doing that? Are we looking in that direction <\/span><\/span>at all, towards the east of our continent about which we know far too <\/span><\/span>little?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Who in Germany is familiar with Maly Trostenets in the vicinity of <\/span><\/span>Minsk, where at least 60,000 people were murdered from 1942 to 1944? <\/span><\/span>Or the little village of Khatyn, which was razed to the ground in the <\/span><\/span>summer of 1943 with all of its inhabitants murdered \u2013 half of whom were <\/span><\/span>children? Who has heard of Koriukivka in northern Ukraine, where, over <\/span><\/span>the course of two days, 6700 men, women and children fell victim to the <\/span><\/span>biggest and most brutal reprisal of the Second World War? <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Who knows the town of Rzhev, not far from Moscow, where the <\/span><\/span>Red Army suffered over a million dead and wounded there alone in the <\/span><\/span>course of a seemingly never-ending battle?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Who knows the little town of Mizoch, on the outskirts of which its <\/span><\/span>Jewish population was shot dead in the space of just a single day, on 14 <\/span><\/span>October 1942? Five photographs by German policeman Gustav Hille bear <\/span><\/span>sole witness to the scene of the crime, which is a gentle, hilly meadow <\/span><\/span>today. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cStillness and silence hang over the dead who lie buried beneath <\/span><\/span>the collapsed homes covered by grass. The stillness is worse than tears <\/span><\/span>and curses.\u201d This is what Vasili Grossman wrote in the autumn of 1943.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Yet in the silence you can hear them, the stories of the survivors, <\/span><\/span>the Soviet prisoners of war, the forced labourers, displaced citizens who <\/span><\/span>were robbed of their homes and possessions, the Red Army soldiers who <\/span><\/span>went on to push back and defeat the Wehrmacht. One of them was David <\/span><\/span>Dushman, who, as the last surviving liberator of Auschwitz, died just a <\/span><\/span>few days ago \u2013 like Boris Popov at the age of 98. He, too, told us about <\/span><\/span>these events throughout his lifetime.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this war casts a long shadow, a shadow <\/span><\/span>that hangs over us to this very day.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In a letter to his wife, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, who worked <\/span><\/span>in the international law division of the Wehrmacht High Command, wrote <\/span><\/span>the following in August 1941 (and I quote) \u201conce more the news from <\/span><\/span>the east is […] terrible.\u201d (…) \u201cwe bear the responsibility for hecatombs <\/span><\/span>of corpses\u201d. Time and again, he writes, news filtered through of <\/span><\/span>transports of prisoners and Jews, of which only 20 percent arrived. Time <\/span><\/span>and again, there were reports of starving prisoners in the camps, as well <\/span><\/span>as outbreaks of typhus and other epidemics caused by general privation. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The war of which von Moltke wrote abandoned every human <\/span><\/span>dimension. But it was people who conceived of it and carried it out. They <\/span><\/span>were Germans. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And so it leaves in its wake \u2013 for each and every generation anew <\/span><\/span>\u2013 the agonising question: How could this happen? What did our forebears <\/span><\/span>know? What did they do? <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Nothing that happened in the depths of the east back then was a <\/span><\/span>coincidence. The operational units of the security forces <\/span><\/span>(Sicherheitspolizei), the SD, the Waffen-SS and those helping them did <\/span><\/span>not haphazardly blaze their murderous and pillaging trail. They followed <\/span><\/span>the destructive insanity and murderous plans that had been drafted at <\/span><\/span>the Reich Security Main Office and at the competent Reich ministries. <\/span><\/span>And they followed the Wehrmacht, German soldiers, who had previously <\/span><\/span>robbed and harassed the population or executed alleged partisans. The <\/span><\/span>criminal war of aggression wore the uniform of the Wehrmacht. The <\/span><\/span>soldiers of the Wehrmacht also had a hand in its cruelties. We Germans <\/span><\/span>have taken a long time, too long, to admit this fact. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The plans that the German soldiers followed were called <\/span><\/span>\u201cGeneralplan Ost\u201d and the \u201cHunger or Backe Plan\u201d, enshrining <\/span><\/span>inhumanity as a principle. They were plans whose objective was to <\/span><\/span>exploit and starve people to death, to displace and enslave them and, <\/span><\/span>ultimately, to annihilate them. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Officials at the Reich Security Main Office planned the annihilation <\/span><\/span>with cynical precision. They planned a war that declared the entire Soviet <\/span><\/span>population to be the enemies, from newborn babies to the very old. The <\/span><\/span>enemies were to be defeated not just militarily, but were also to be made <\/span><\/span>to pay for the war imposed upon them themselves, with their lives, their <\/span><\/span>property, with everything that was part of their existence. The entire <\/span><\/span>European part of the Soviet Union, whole stretches of today\u2019s Ukraine <\/span><\/span>and Belarus \u2013 and I quote from the orders \u2013 were to be \u201ccleansed\u201d and <\/span><\/span>prepared for German colonisation. Metropolises such as Leningrad, <\/span><\/span>present-day Saint Petersburg, Moscow or Kyiv, were to be razed to the <\/span><\/span>ground.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Soviet prisoners of war were not thought of as prisoners. They <\/span><\/span>were not comrades. They were robbed of their humanity; dehumanised. <\/span><\/span>The Wehrmacht, which bore responsibility for the prisoners, did not have the intention of feeding them, \u201cdurchf\u00fcttern\u201d, as this was commonly <\/span>referred to at the time. And the German generals did not express <\/span>disagreement with Hitler\u2019s intention of making the Wehrmacht the <\/span>executors of this crime. \u201cNon-working prisoners of war must starve.\u201d <\/span>That was the order issued by the Quartermaster General of the German <\/span>Army in November 1941. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Boris Popov starves in four different prisoner of war camps, from <\/span><\/span>the first to the last day of his captivity. In Drosdy, he relates, it is only <\/span><\/span>after 12 days that they are given half a litre of \u201cbalanda\u201d, a watery soup <\/span><\/span>that they scoop out of a cast-iron trough, with German guards chivvying <\/span><\/span>them along. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to hunger, the prisoners had to endure deadly hygienic <\/span><\/span>conditions. Vermin, epidemics and diseases spread. Prisoner of war <\/span><\/span>Nikolai Nikolaevich Danilov recounted the following: \u201cSick and healthy <\/span><\/span>people were lying on top of each other. Lice and rats were crawling over <\/span><\/span>our bodies.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

n the exhibition that we are opening today, you can see what <\/span><\/span>appears to be an innocuous photo. It shows hundreds of trees towering <\/span><\/span>towards the heavens. Upon closer inspection, you can see that they are <\/span><\/span>bereft of leaves, branches and bark. Soviet prisoners of war have <\/span><\/span>scratched them from their trunks with their bare hands to avoid starving <\/span><\/span>to death. The photo gives us an impression of the terror of these camps. <\/span><\/span>It is from Schloss Holte-Stukenbrock in East Westphalia. This is another <\/span><\/span>place where these crimes were committed, and not far away in the east, <\/span><\/span>but barely an hour from my home town, from the place where I grew up <\/span><\/span>and where, during my time at school, I learned nothing of what had <\/span><\/span>happened there less than two decades previously.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

After Drosdy, Boris Popov is taken to the former Stalag 352 in <\/span><\/span>Masyukovshchina, today a district of Minsk. Here alone, 80,000 <\/span><\/span>prisoners of war lose their lives. However, Popov is lucky. He is assigned <\/span><\/span>to the mailroom of the military administration. In early 1942, he is <\/span><\/span>transferred to a camp in Gomel and two months later to Stalag IV B in <\/span><\/span>Brandenburg.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Boris Popov is liberated in M\u00fchlberg an der Elbe on 23 April 1945. <\/span><\/span>He is an exception: almost six million men and women from the Red <\/span><\/span>Army were taken as prisoners of war by the Germans. More than half of <\/span><\/span>them died \u2013 mostly in the internment camps in the east. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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After his liberation, Boris Popov can \u2013 for the first time in four years <\/span><\/span>\u2013 write a letter to his mother. To Leningrad. He does not know whether <\/span><\/span>she is still alive. After all, one million Leningraders starved to death <\/span><\/span>during the German siege. A few years ago, Daniil Granin spoke of the <\/span><\/span>horrors of the siege in the German Bundestag: \u201cDeath came quietly, in <\/span><\/span>complete silence, day after day, month after month, each of the 900 <\/span><\/span>days. How could people escape starvation? […] They scraped the paste from wallpaper and boiled leather belts. The chemists in the institutes <\/span>distilled varnish. People ate cats and dogs.\u201d They were forced to eat <\/span>unimaginable things during the siege. In his unforgettable speech, Daniil <\/span>Granin spoke of atrocities which I as President of this country find <\/span>difficult to even utter.<\/span>
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This, too \u2013 the deliberate decision not to take the city but to starve <\/span><\/span>it in a 900-day siege \u2013 was part of the \u201cHunger Plan\u201d. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Boris Popov\u2019s mother survives the siege. In 1946, Boris Popov <\/span><\/span>returns to Leningrad. He is able to complete his studies, marries and <\/span><\/span>moves with his wife to Minsk, where he works as the chief engineer at <\/span><\/span>the Belarusfilm studios. In this capacity, he goes back to Germany in the <\/span><\/span>1970s.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Boris Popov left us a moving life story. But no one wanted to hear <\/span><\/span>it for a long time. Not in the Soviet Union, where he had to fight until <\/span><\/span>1975 as a former prisoner of war to be even recognised as a war veteran. <\/span><\/span>Nor in Germany. The heavy lot of our own, of German soldiers, who had <\/span><\/span>been taken as prisoners of war by the Soviet Union, overshadowed any <\/span><\/span>interest in the fate of Soviet prisoners of war. That may have eased the <\/span><\/span>conscience of some Germans in the first post-war years. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Yet the crimes committed by Germans in this war place a heavy <\/span><\/span>burden on us. They place a heavy burden on the victims\u2019 descendants <\/span><\/span>as well as on us. To this very day. That it was our fathers, grandfathers <\/span><\/span>and great-grandfathers who waged this war, who were involved in these <\/span><\/span>crimes, places a heavy burden on us. That too many perpetrators who <\/span><\/span>had committed the most heinous of crimes were not held to account <\/span><\/span>places a heavy burden on us. That we failed for far too long to recognise <\/span><\/span>the victims in the occupied east places a heavy burden on us. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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And on this anniversary let us not forget the impact to this very <\/span><\/span>day on ourselves, on our own family histories, of the suffering, the <\/span><\/span>horrors of this war and its consequences: displacement, division, <\/span><\/span>occupation. It is the elderly among us who experienced this war as <\/span><\/span>children. It is their fathers who fought in it. It is their mothers who <\/span><\/span>suffered terrible things, also at the hands of the advancing Red Army. <\/span><\/span>As we used to say just a few years ago, many of the fathers \u201chad stayed <\/span><\/span>in Russia\u201d. They were killed, went missing or died as prisoners of war. <\/span><\/span>The war also cast a shadow over the lives of this fatherless generation.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Anyone who wants to shed light on this aspect of our history does <\/span><\/span>not have to go far \u2013 you can find forgotten corners in the shadows of the <\/span><\/span>past on our own doorstep. These are not only the former prisoner of war <\/span><\/span>camps such as Stukenbrock in Westphalia or Sandbostel in Lower <\/span><\/span>Saxony, which I visited just a few days ago. In Germany, there are more <\/span><\/span>than 3500 burial sites where Soviet forced labourers and prisoners of <\/span><\/span>war are interred. The museum in Karlshorst has drawn up a list of these <\/span><\/span>sites and produced a map. Just as people visit the memorials to the Second World War in the west, I hope that young people will also seek <\/span>out the forgotten places in the east of our continent. That would be an <\/span>important contribution towards joint remembrance.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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It is not easy for anyone to call to mind the horrors of the past. <\/span><\/span>However, repressing memories, not admitting guilt never makes things <\/span><\/span>easier. Indeed, all of that becomes an ever heavier burden. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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We should remember \u2013 not in order to burden present and future <\/span><\/span>generations with a guilt that is not theirs but for our own sake. We should <\/span><\/span>remember in order to understand what impact this past has on the <\/span><\/span>present. Only those who learn to understand the traces of the past in <\/span><\/span>the present will be equipped to help shape a future which avoids wars, <\/span><\/span>rejects tyranny and makes possible peaceful co-existence in freedom. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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That is why we should know that places such as Mizoch, Babyn Yar <\/span><\/span>and Koriukivka in Ukraine, Rzhev in Russia, Maly Trostenets and Khatyn <\/span><\/span>in Belarus, these forgotten sites, are also sites of German history. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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That after everything that happened Germans are received today <\/span><\/span>with great hospitality by people in, of all places, Belarus, Ukraine or <\/span><\/span>Russia, that they are extended a warm welcome \u2013 is nothing short of a <\/span><\/span>miracle. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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That six years ago, on the anniversary of the end of the war, I as <\/span><\/span>German Foreign Minister was welcomed in Volgograd, the former <\/span><\/span>Stalingrad, by a large crowd of veterans \u2013 upright and proud in their <\/span><\/span>uniforms which had become much too big for them, their hands raised <\/span><\/span>in military salute and tears in their eyes \u2013 was one of the most moving <\/span><\/span>and lasting memories of my life.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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What I say to you today is: on this day when we are remembering <\/span><\/span>the millions upon millions who lost their lives, let us also recall how <\/span><\/span>precious reconciliation is when it has grown over the graves of the fallen. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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This gift of reconciliation gives rise to a great responsibility for <\/span><\/span>Germany. We want, and indeed must, do everything to protect <\/span><\/span>international law and territorial integrity on this continent and to strive <\/span><\/span>for peace with and among the success states to the former Soviet Union. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Boris Popov received post from the German organisation Kontakte-<\/span><\/span>Kontakty in 2007. He was asked to tell his story in a letter. This letter <\/span><\/span>was just the beginning. Until his death last year, Boris Popov gave <\/span><\/span>lectures and speeches about his experiences, speaking in schools and <\/span><\/span>before audiences in Belarus and Germany. He was presented with the <\/span><\/span>Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in Minsk in March <\/span><\/span>2020, just a few months before his death. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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When asked by a pupil in Berlin what he felt when he thought back <\/span><\/span>to his time as a prisoner of war, Boris Popov once said: <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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\u201cThis raises the compelling question: is it not time for humanity to <\/span><\/span>categorically reject wars and to resolve issues \u2013 no matter how <\/span><\/span>complicated \u2013 peacefully and in a spirit of mutual respect?\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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This is the question which Boris Popov put to us. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Europe was once closer to the answer than it is today. Decades <\/span><\/span>ago, despite tensions and the confrontation between the two blocs, there <\/span><\/span>was a different spirit on both sides of the Iron Curtain. I am talking about <\/span><\/span>the spirit of Helsinki. In the midst of the mutual threat of nuclear <\/span><\/span>annihilation, a process developed which helped to avert another war <\/span><\/span>through the recognition of joint principles and through cooperation. This <\/span><\/span>path, which led to the Helsinki Final Act, now lies almost half a century <\/span><\/span>behind us. It was neither easy nor straightforward. However, it was a <\/span><\/span>path which led us away from the logic of escalation and the threat of <\/span><\/span>mutual destruction. I fear impasse and alienation much more than <\/span><\/span>difficult paths.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I am very concerned that the painful history we are remembering <\/span><\/span>today is in itself increasingly becoming the source of alienation. When <\/span><\/span>looking back means focusing solely on our own national perspective, <\/span><\/span>when the exchange on different perspectives on remembrance comes to <\/span><\/span>a halt or is rejected, writing history becomes an instrument for new <\/span><\/span>conflicts, the object of new forms of resentment. I firmly believe that we <\/span><\/span>must not allow history to become a weapon. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
After all, we have this in common: we remember not by turning <\/span><\/span>our backs to the future \u2013 but by looking ahead and shouting out loud <\/span><\/span>and clear: never again should there be such a war! I know that I share <\/span><\/span>this sentiment with a great number of people in Poland and the Baltic <\/span><\/span>States, in Ukraine, in Belarus and in Russia, and in all successor states <\/span><\/span>to the Soviet Union. Today I want to address you, the citizens of all the <\/span><\/span>countries which suffered during the German war of annihilation:<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I ask you to ensure, indeed let us all ensure, that we do not <\/span><\/span>confront each other again as enemies. Let us ensure that we do not fail <\/span><\/span>to recognise the human being in others. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Let us ensure that those who propagate national hubris, contempt, <\/span><\/span>enmity and alienation do not have the last word.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Remembrance should bring us closer together. It must not be <\/span><\/span>allowed to divide us once more.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The future \u2013 a better future \u2013 is in our hands. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Here, in this very house, the war was formally ended. Karlshorst <\/span><\/span>will therefore always be a special place for our country and for this city <\/span><\/span>\u2013 a place of remembrance. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Despite all the political differences, despite all the necessary <\/span><\/span>debates on freedom and democracy and security, there must be room <\/span><\/span>for remembrance! That is why I am here today. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Remembering the past does not heal any wounds inflicted in the <\/span><\/span>present. However, events in the present can never erase what happened <\/span><\/span>in the past. No matter what, the past lives on in us: either as repressed <\/span><\/span>history or as history that we accept. For too long, we Germans have <\/span><\/span>failed to do that when it comes to the crimes committed in the east of <\/span><\/span>our continent. The time has come to rectify that. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
That is why we are here in Karlshorst today. We are here to <\/span><\/span>remember the 27 million dead, the 14 million civilian victims. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We are here to remember the huge contribution of the men and <\/span><\/span>women from the ranks of the Red Army who fought against Nazi <\/span><\/span>Germany.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We remember their courage and resolve, we remember the <\/span><\/span>millions who risked and lost their lives alongside their American, British <\/span><\/span>and French allies as well as many others, in order to free us all from the <\/span><\/span>National Socialist tyranny. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I profess my deep respect for their fight against \u2013 as Yehuda Bauer <\/span><\/span>writes \u2013 \u201cthe worst regime that has ever disgraced this planet\u201d.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I bow in sorrow before the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian <\/span><\/span>victims, before all victims in the territory of the former Soviet Union.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n<\/div>\n
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