German FM at Holocaust ceremony: Relations with Israel 'seem like a miracle'

Steinmeier spoke of Germany's responsibility to remember its history and to "stand against injustice, against any form of xenophobia and discrimination".

By JPOST.COM STAFF
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (photo credit: REUTERS)
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier
(photo credit: REUTERS)
At a ceremony marking 70 years since the liberation of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke out against racism and xenophobia.
According to AFP, Steinmeier spoke of Germany's responsibility to remember its history and to "stand against injustice, against any form of xenophobia and discrimination".
"The crimes of the Nazi regime are without equal," he said. "They make us shudder -the murder of millions of Jews in Europe, the crime against humanity that is the Shoah.
"The killing and persecution of Roma and Sinti, homosexuals, the disabled, of political activists, of people who thought, looked or prayed differently or otherwise acted in contravention of what the Nazis dictated," AFP quoted him as saying.
Steinmeier said that, in view of such horrors, it "seems like a miracle" that Germany and Israel now have a "deep friendship", marked by 50 years of diplomatic ties and a renewed "flowering of Jewish life" in Germany.