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Peres Addresses Bundestag On International Holocaust Remembrance Day

By Howard M. Friedman

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, as set by a 2005 United Nations Resolution. Marking the occasion, Israeli President Shimon Peres addressed the German Bundestag. (Full text of remarks.) In a wide-ranging speech, he urged that authorities bring to justice those still alive in Germany and elsewhere in Europe who participated in the genocide of the Nazi era. Reviewing the history of the Holocaust, he said:

The Nazi rabid hatred cannot be solely defined as "anti-Semitic." This is a commonly-used definition. It does not fully explain the burning, murderous, beastly drive that motivated the Nazi regime, and their obsessive resolve to annihilate the Jews. The war's objective was to conquer Europe; not to settle scores with Jewish history. And if we constituted, we the Jews, a terrible threat in the eyes of Hitler's regime, this was not a military threat, but rather a moral threat. An opposition to the desire that denied our faith that every man is born in the image of God, that we are all equal in the eyes of God, and that all men are equal.

Full post as published by Religion Clause on January 27, 2010 (boomark / email).