“We weren’t ready to accept being discriminated against as Jews“

“People were scared of standing up to the National Socialists. But they should not have been scared of telling their children what happened”, said Renate Lasker-Harpprecht, survivor of the Auschwitz death camp and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In this way, she reaffirmed the importance of a culture of remembrance in Germany. On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 – together with her sister, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch MBE, and Bundestag President Dr Wolfgang Schäuble – she participated in a panel discussion with 71 participants in the annual Youth Encounter.

The young people – who come not only from Germany and France, but also from other countries such as Israel, Syria or Afghanistan – are spending a week in the framework of the German Bundestag’s Youth Encounter addressing issues connected with the crimes of the National Socialists. This year, they visited Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site and the university in Munich, focusing on the subject of “Conscience and Resistance”.