Poll shows over 80 percent of Germans want to 'put Holocaust behind them'

FM Steinmeier responds saying 'line can never be drawn under history' as Rivlin visits UN Holocaust memorial

The atrocities of the Nazi regime should never be forgotten, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in an interview published Sunday as a poll indicated 81 per cent of Germans would like to put the Holocaust behind them.

"It remains the duty of parents to inform their children that there can never be a line drawn under [our history]," Steinmeier told Sunday's Bild newspaper.

"We can consider ourselves lucky that after the atrocities of the Third Reich, after 70 million dead in the Second World War and six million murdered Jews, that we can be accepted back into the international community, even today," he said.

The poll, conducted by the not-for-profit Bertelsmann Foundation about German-Israeli relations, found that 58 percent would like to see a line drawn under the Nazi past, Bild reported.

The findings were published ahead of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, now Oswiecim, in Poland by the Red Army on January 27, 1945. Steinmeier called it "a day of shame for Germany."

Speaking of German-Israeli relations, Steinmeier said: "The bond of trust between Germany and Israel has grown over recent decades. The Germans have learned that the monstrous crimes of the Shoah will always mark relations between our two nations."

Shoah is the Hebrew word for the genocide of the Jews during the Nazi regime.

Steinmeier said he is "grateful that the exchange between Germany and Israel continues to grow."

"Never again can we allow members of the Jewish faith to be endangered in our midst," he said.

Rivlin visits UN Holocaust memorial

President Reuven Rivlin left Sunday on his first official visit to the United States, where he will address a UN session marking 70 years since the end of the Holocaust.

His trip comes at a point of high tension between Israel and Washington after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted a controversial invitation to address a joint session of Congress in early March in a move which was not coordinated with the White House.

During the five-day trip, Rivlin will be in New York to address a UN Special Assembly on International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday at the invitation of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, his office said.

Rivlin, who took office as Israel’s 10th president in July, will also hold talks with Ban and meet members of the African-American, Hispanic and Jewish communities.

“Israel is not compensation for the Holocaust, but the Holocaust proved beyond any shadow of a doubt why there was a need for the State of Israel,” Rivlin said in a statement, adding that he was taking with him “those voices of those who perished” in the Nazi genocide.

Netanyahu’s visit to Washington will take place in early March, just two weeks before snap elections in Israel, and the White House has already said that President Barack Obama will not meet the Israeli leader, given the proximity to the vote.

The Obama administration fears Netanyahu’s address, which is to focus on the threat he sees from Iran, could be used by the Republicans — who control Congress — to undermine ongoing nuclear talks with Tehran just as they appear poised to bear fruit.

In his statement, Rivlin emphasized that Washington “was a true friend and important ally of Israel.”

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