“Germany must not reject refugees”

Editor’s note: This is a translation of an article originally appearing in Die Welt as “Deutschland darf keine Flüchtlinge ablehnen” (“Germany must not reject refugees”). Thanks to the translator who must remain anonymous. He writes:

You are probably following the news; the country is being invaded, all borders are for all practical matters wide open. There are increasing attacks on the (already limited) freedom of speech, and mass media is doing what they can against people who dare to think differently — including publishing real names of people who write (sometimes in a foolish way, I admit) about the invaders (called here by mass media “refugees”).

There is the PEGIDA movement in Central Germany (Dresden) who rallied at least 30.000 people to protest against mass immigration. They hold rallies every Monday on that city and it IS expanding to other places as well. But people are afraid of being called extremists or of even losing their jobs if they utter something deemed not politically correct.

Now the former leader of the Jewish Council in Germany has asked that this movement be forbidden for being anti-Semitic. And I have seen people from that movement waving Israeli (!) flags. Now go figure.

Germany cannot afford to reject refugees, says Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of German Jews (Zentralrat der deutschen Juden). It (Germany) has brought “evil” upon others and is indebted to other nations.

According to the President of the GJCC, Josef Schuster, Germany is “the last land that can afford to reject refugees and persecuted people.” It has brought so much evil [“perdition”] upon the world and it is deeply in debt with so many countries, he said on Sunday during a memorial ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp at Dachau on Apr 29, 1945.

He asks himself, when today, again, some citizens hunt [agitate] against refugees or talk in a demeaning way about Jews, how deep the need for protecting human dignity is anchored in people´s minds.

Dachau´s prisoners would have known, Schuster noted, how fast human civilization could be laid into ruins. “How a people from a supposedly [sic!!] cultured nation (Kulturvolk] became barbarians.” Fundamental values such as tolerance, respect, humility and responsibility should always be re-exercized and defended.

“I get sick when I see that in Dresden not less than 10,000 people cheer up an Islamophobe and right-wing populist like Geert Wilders” (he spoke there once), said the doctor from Würzburg. Growing numbers of refugees and Islamic terrorism are “not a reason to fight for a Christian-Jewish West without Muslims”, or to threaten to murder politicians.

Schuster said that Holocaust survivors´ memories are nowadays “more precious than ever.” What happened moves always further away; for many young people, NS terror and the Shoah are “only historical dates/facts” without a personal relationship (to them): “Distance grows, and empathy (levels) drops — except when you set foot on this place” [i.e., Dachau].

On these grounds, visiting a concentration camp memorial should be compulsory for  all junior high school students. He hopes that his suggestion will be discussed again in the Bavarian Parliament. Chancellor Angela Merkel participated also in the ceremony. The Dachau concentration camp was created on March 22, 1933. Around 200,000 people from all over Europe were kept prisoners in Dachau and in several of its satellite camps , at least 43,000 were murdered there.