At the site of the former Nazi concentration camp in Dachau near Munich, 120 survivors and officials have marked the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the camp by American troops. German President Horst Köhler – who was the first German head of state to ever take part in a ceremony in Dachau – urged that the atrocities committed by the Nazis always be remembered. Addressing the Dachau survivors and the chairman of their association, Max Mannheimer, Köhler said: “Over all the years, you have not once demanded revenge or retaliation, but you have always called for reconciliation.”
Mannheimer, 90, who became one of the Jewish inmates at Dachau after surviving the Theresienstadt and Auschwitz death camps, said people of many nationalities had been imprisoned at Dachau when the camp was liberated by the 42nd Rainbow Division of the US Army on 2 May 1945. He added: “We hope that today’s Europe will also be liberated: from extremism left and right, from anti-Semitism and from racism.”
In a special message for the commemoration which was read out by a former US ambassador to Germany, President Barack Obama said: “Our duty is to preserve the legacy of the survivors.”
Opened in 1933, Dachau was the first concentration camp of the Nazis. Of the 206,000 inmates held there during the twelve years of its existence, an estimated 36,000 people were murdered there or died due to the sanitary atrocious conditions.
