National socialism

“You see, the can work”

The Auschwitz Survivor Ruth Klüger speaks at the ceremony for the victims of national socialism about your experiences as a Forced laborer. In the very end she quotes Angela Merkel.

“I’m going to give you now a little bit about my experiences to tell,” begins the 84-year-old eyewitness, your speech in the plenary chamber of the German Bundestag. Ruth Klüger, in 1931, the Vienna-born scholar of literature, was Forced and survived the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. The few remaining inmates were on 27. January 1945 Soviet soldiers liberated. The then 13-year-old girl was already with a white lie to save.

As the Nazi minions of the prisoners for the service sought, it was little Ruth, a bit older. Because the chosen ones had to at least be 15. “You see, the can work,” have a camp-Keeper with reference to the thick calves of the child said. With this Trick escaped Ruth Klüger the Gas. All of the others with whom you have previously from the Terezin concentration camp to Auschwitz had been deported, were murdered.

Many women were in the concentration camp as a prostitute abused

It is still in the Reichstag, as the petite lady about her Suffering at the time, and her life after that, reported. Only the Whispers of the interpreter is to hear, if you in addition to foreign guests with headphones sits. Ruth Klüger recalls the Winter of 1944/45. It was the coldest she can remember. “The cold, the man helpless, exposed, remains for me a memory of forced labor.” Together with the mother they had to cut trees in the forest, Stumps away, seemed to drag. “It should probably be something to be built.” What, exactly, has you never know.

Sometimes be it in homes, borrowed become, sometimes, they had to work in the quarry. There it is “to Die cold.” The clothing is too thin, newsprint on the feet, ulcerated wounds to the legs. “From the quarry, I dream sometimes,” says Ruth Klüger seven decades later in the ceremony and read a poem before, the agonies and hopes of that time.

In Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp had forced laborers in underground tunnels, the rocket, “V1” build

Your mother had many men, armaments for the Nazi war of extermination. Ruth Klüger also mentions a work for female prisoners, the later not as a forced labor have been recognized: Prostitution. Constantly if the women have been in danger, sick or pregnant.

The phrase “We can do it!” says Ruth Wiser heroic

Your own destiny referred to Ruth Klüger as “not pitiful”. You’ve been lucky. She has survived, and millions of others do not. When Schienenlegen came with a curious man from the civilian population in contact. “I would have him like this brought me a bread with lard to give”, says the Austrian-born wife. And this sounds so typical of the Viennese, as if she had her native town never leave. However, the Stranger “ate with enjoyment, as he gave me the starving people of Germany told”.

At the end of their 25-minute speech is Ruth Klüger on the German culture of remembrance and the current refugee situation. She praises Germany for its policy of “open borders and generosity”. This is from “astonishment to admiration,” has passed. The Holocaust Survivors and former Forced laborer would like to thank the very end with a “simple and heroic” saying: “We can do it.” For several minutes to applaud the politicians in the plenary hall of the Bundestag and the many guests in the visitor stands.

Support for German Chancellor Merkel

Then go to the visibly moved Ruth Klüger all modesty to the representatives of the German constitutional organs in the first row. In succession takes you to the thanks of President Joachim Gauck, Bundesratspräsident, Stanislaw Tillich, and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel contrary. Merkel’s in recent times so often kritisierter phrase – “We can do it” – has in this Moment a completely different sound. Parliamentary President Norbert Lammert joins Ruth Klügers last words explicitly.