Foreign
VISITING Israeli President Isaac Herzog has called for more closer ties between Israel and Germany in a speech before Bundestag lower house of parliament in Berlin on Tuesday.
Herzog said the memory of German crimes under Nazi rule must be preserved, adding that “the Jewish nation is a nation of remembrance,” Herzog said, adding that this is part of their identity.
He called on the deputies to pray for the souls of the six million Jews murdered in Germany during the regime of Adolf Hitler.
Bundestag President Bärbel Bas said anti-Semitism has remained not just a problem of the past, but also of today, of which there should be no turning a blind eye to.
She promised to work to promote plans to set up a German-Israeli youth organisation.
Herzog will visit the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp memorial together with German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Herzog and Steinmeier had earlier outside Munich, paid tribute to the victims of a kidnapping incident during the 1972 Munich Olympics which ended in bloodshed.
Eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team, five Palestinians and a German police officer, were killed after a botched operation by German police to free hostages on Sept. 5, 1972.
The families reached an agreement with the German government on compensation for their suffering only a few days before the commemoration ceremony. (dpa/NAN)
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Tags: Adolf Hitler Bärbel Bas Frank-Walter Steinmeier Isaac Herzog Munich Olympics
