“Everything will be dead – eyes, judges, time.”

This sentence written by Jean-Paul Sartre chillingly describes how the silence of all witnesses and all authorities that can remind us or pass judgment will lead the past to be forgotten.

Claude Lanzmann’s work was to counteract this muteness.

With his work, his – and I say this very consciously – life’s work, he fought against forgetting.

He did his utmost to keep sight, judgment and time alive.

One might say that Lanzmann opened people’s eyes and reminded them. In this way, he gave the victims a voice.

Claude Lanzmann died seven years ago. He would have been 100 years old this year. Today, we are celebrating this life, his life. We are remembering him and his unique work.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Those who have watched the opening scene of “Shoah” will not be able to forget it.

It shows Szymon Srebrnik, who survived the Holocaust as a teenager, singing as he floats along a river on a punt. Willows line the banks of the river. Rain falls gently on the water. The scene looks idyllic, but it is not.

The town through which the river runs is called Chełmno. This was where the National Socialists built one of their first extermination camps and murdered thousands and thousands of Jewish men, women and children.

Szymon Srebrnik was supposed to be one of them. Badly wounded, he narrowly escaped death. It is a miracle that he survived, although “miracle” is not the word Claude Lanzmann would have used. He saw surviving the Holocaust more often than not as a result of coincidences, arbitrariness or unfathomable circumstances.

Claude Lanzmann’s world-famous documentary took on the challenge of narrating the incomprehensible.

At the same time, he did not seek to explain or rationalise it. Instead, he let the endless horror speak for itself.

No sense can be made of annihilation because it makes no sense.

In his autobiography, Lanzmann wrote about how he was commissioned to make the film. A friend of his at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited Lanzmann to his office and told him: “It’s not a matter of making a film about the Shoah, but a film that is the Shoah.”

And thus Claude Lanzmann created a film that does not even try to show the murdering in the camps.

His film does not show any archive footage, images of the dead or piles of corpses.

Instead, it shows the faces of the survivors who present their testimony.

Lanzmann allows their words, pauses and silence – or singing, as in Szymon Srebrnik’s case – to become the image of the Shoah.

The survivors’ spoken words alone preserve the dignity of the dead.

“Shoah” is not a film about history, but rather an experience of remembrance itself.

And thus it is a unique work, a unique document in itself.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I would like to speak today about remembrance because I believe that it is in danger.

Allow me to give you an example.

A survey by the Jewish Claims Conference, published at the start of this year, showed the following:

Twelve percent of 18 to 29-year-olds in Germany have never heard about the Holocaust.

This figure is scarcely better in other countries. On the contrary.

Fourteen percent of this age group in Austria, 15 percent in Romania and as many as 46 percent in France do not know what the terms “Shoah” or “Holocaust” mean.

This shocks me.

These figures show that remembrance is not something we can take for granted.

Remembrance must not become a matter of duty or a mere ritual.

At the end of his memoir, Claude Lanzmann wrote: “...incarnation ... has been the abiding obsession of my life.”

I see incarnation as a task for us all. We need to make it more easily accessible to society. At the moment, this is not working as it should, given that we are experiencing a new level of disrespect, indeed contempt, for the sites of terror and disenfranchisement. Arson attacks. Remembrance trees chopped down. Graffiti. The theft of concentration camp gates.

Vandalism in the sites has increased in particular and to a shocking extent at the sites dedicated to the remembrance of National Socialist crimes, so I am very glad that we recently adopted the new memorial site concept in the Cabinet.

This concept is more than just a bureaucratic measure. It is a need in society. We want to promote remembrance work systematically and to create space where history is not only conveyed, but can also be experienced and discussed.

In this way, what Lanzmann described as the abiding obsession of his life will become something that all of us – from school education to the public culture of remembrance – can access and experience.

And in turn, this forms an unshakeable pillar of our democratic identity.

This identity is showing cracks. Since 7 October 2023, if not before, we are seeing this all too clearly.

Since then, our country and other countries in the world have been experiencing a shameful and unacceptable wave of antisemitism.

And we are experiencing how in the two years since this watershed for Jews worldwide, empathy and solidarity with Jews are being replaced to some extent by a lack of understanding, insinuations and increasingly, the words “Yes, but...”

Ladies and gentlemen,

I want to state here clearly that criticism, incomprehension and perhaps even horror in the face of a government policy – regardless of which country is concerned – are legitimate.

However, criticism of an Israeli Government cannot be allowed to automatically mean criticism of the State of Israel, let alone of all Jews!

Particularly in Germany, we have and will retain a responsibility – an historic responsibility – for separating these aspects, a duty to take on responsibility for the security of Jewish people in our country, for the existence and security of the State of Israel irrespective of its government policy at any given time; a duty to repeatedly make clear that we stand firmly and steadfastly with Israel and its people.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I began this speech with a quotation from Sartre, a quotation about what happens when witnesses fall silent.

“Everything will be dead – eyes, judges, time.”

It is up to us to continue Claude Lanzmann’s legacy. And for us today, that means keeping our eyes open, allowing the authorities to speak and keeping remembrance alive. After all, every “never again” will go unheard if those to whom it is addressed do not know what it actually is that should never happen again.

That is why it is so important that we have gathered here today at the Jewish Museum, united in remembrance, for our future, and as citizens of France and Germany. I am particularly pleased that we are doing so together 80 years after the end of the war.

That is also why I am grateful that the Alfred Landecker Foundation and my ministry, the Federal Foreign Office, were able to jointly contribute to the funding of this important project, because in these times of growing antisemitism in our countries and in our Europe, we realise that remembrance is more than empty words.

It is an experience and a duty.

We owe that to the people of this country, especially now.

We owe it to our democratic system based on the rule of law, which has stood the test of time, in order to ensure that people do not close their eyes and that their ability to judge remains sharp – and so that the past stays vibrant.

Thank you very much indeed.