In the Day of Memory, 70 years after the liberation of the concentration camp of Auschwitz, where millions of Jews and people persecuted by the Nazis were killed, several hundred students from various schools of Munich joined in a demonstration organised in the city by the Community of Sant'Egidio in order not to forget.
The participants gathered in the Geschwister-Scholl-Platz, a significant place because it remembers the name of the brother and the sister that, in 1942, peacefully opposed to Nazism, founding along with other university students the White Rose movement, and who paid with their lives for the publication of their brochures. This memory is especially important at a time when fewer and fewer eyewitnesses can tell the terrible suffering of the victims of Nazi persecution. With the demonstration in the square, the youth wanted to say that, starting from the memory, it is possible to build the present and the future, a better society in Germany and Europe. A key issue, especially in these times of increasing conflict and terrorism.
During the demonstration, there were the interventions by Rabbi Langnas of Munich, Professor Riegger of the Faculty of Catholic Theology in Munich, Mrs. Kronawitter, President of the White Rose Foundation and Ms. Rita Prigmore, a Sinti woman that survived the Holocaust, victim of the experiments by Mengele on twins, which claimed the life of her sister. Ursula Kalb of the Community of Sant'Egidio invited the youth to care and to commitment in this society where, even today, many are discriminated and marginalised.
At the end, Luzi, a university student, read an appeal of the youth, which was followed by a minute of silence for the victims of then and now. Many young people were deeply touched by this commemoration, expressing the desire to live with renewed attention to minorities and marginalised groups. |