I am delighted to be here with you all at this reception in the Liebermann Villa on the eve of the International Conference Against Antisemitism to be held tomorrow at the Federal Ministry of Justice.

 Our venue tonight is a truly special place: and I don’t just mean the villa we are in right now, but its garden too – even though the cold and the dark are perhaps not the best conditions in which to fully enjoy its beauty. 

 But just how magnificent this garden can be is evident in the many oil paintings that Max Liebermann created here between 1910 and 1934, regarded as masterpieces of German impressionism. They are exquisitely colourful images, warm, often idyllic, and yet infused with a faint melancholy. 

 Max Liebermann was a German painter, and he was a Jew. He did not think of himself as a Jewish painter, however: in the 1920s, when the Nazi press reacted with outrage because he had painted the portrait of Reich President Hindenburg, Liebermann reportedly said “I am just a painter; what does painting have to do with Judaism?”. 

 The villa we are in was designed for Liebermann in the Hamburg neoclassical style by the architect Paul Otto Baumgarten. Baumgarten was the architect of other nearby villas, besides the Liebermann Villa. One of them also overlooks the Wannsee lake. It is an elegant building, set in majestic grounds. And yet, it is a place that symbolises the cold and the dark like few others. Today, it is known as the “House of the Wannsee Conference”. On the 20th of January 1942, it housed a meeting of 15 men, chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, to plan the extermination of Europe’s Jews. The minutes were taken by Adolf Eichmann.

 Max Liebermann did not live to witness these plans being put into action. After Hitler became chancellor in January 1933, he withdrew from public life and remained for the most part personally unscathed. He died on the 8th of February 1935, 90 years ago almost to the day. His widow, however, was later selected for deportation to Theresienstadt, in 1943. She chose to avoid this fate by taking a lethal dose of sleeping pills. 

 The Liebermann Villa, a place devoted to art and life, is less than 10 minutes’ walk from the venue of the Wannsee Conference. It is a juxtaposition that seems as incomprehensible as that of Weimar and Buchenwald.

 To encounter the deepest abyss alongside the pinnacle of artistic expression, cold alongside warmth, hate alongside beauty – this is a familiar theme in history. But in the 20th-century history of Germany, the abyss is particularly terrifying, the cold is unrelenting, and the hate is absolute and crushing.  

 We must accept this history in its entirety. Because to see only the brighter side of our past is to deceive ourselves, which quickly leads to ignorant hubris, of which no good can come. And to see only the dark side is to risk abandoning all hope that this darkness is finite, and can one day be brought to an end.

 Ladies and gentlemen, we are a long way from the conditions that prevailed under National Socialism. But neither can we accept the bleak situation we currently find ourselves in. 

 The past year has been a terrible one for Jews the world over. The massacre committed by Hamas on the 7th of October 2023, the many thousands of injured victims, the hundreds of hostages – of whom those who are still alive will now hopefully all soon be released – all of this was not met with a wave of solidarity and sympathy for those murdered, raped or maimed, for the surviving dependants, for an entire state whose very existence was threatened. No! 

 We all saw what came next: in the perverse logic particular to antisemitism, the victims became the perpetrators and the perpetrators victims. You are all familiar with the words of Zvi Rex, who said that the Germans would never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz. Today, it seems there are many who cannot forgive the Jews for the 7th of October. 

 Instead of empathy and compassion, Jews were subjected to the worst wave of antisemitism since the end of World War II, as a study by Tel Aviv University has shown. Germany is no exception – on the contrary: in 2023, the number of antisemitic offences doubled in comparison to the previous year. And while the full statistics for 2024 are not yet available, everything points to a further increase. 

But let us not deceive ourselves. There were already antisemitic incidents in this country before the 7th of October. Jews were already subjected to violent attacks before the 7th of October. And Jewish institutions were already in need of protection before the 7th of October – just think of the police officers armed with submachine guns outside Jewish schools. And perhaps documenta 2022, the antisemitic images on display there that were removed only far too late, and the rhetoric that followed were already a manifestation of an atmosphere in which it was felt that antisemitism could somehow be justified with “contextualising” and relativistic distortions.

Having said that, it seems to me that since the 7th of October, the situation is in fact a fundamentally different one.

Numerous Jewish communities have been the target of attacks. The Star of David is being spray-painted on building walls; Israeli flags are being set on fire; crowds of demonstrators threaten Israel and the Jews with extermination and murder; Nazi salutes are performed openly; and the scenes unfolding at certain universities are just as chilling.

 All of this has consequences. Jews in Germany have more reason to be afraid than at any time since 1945. Everyday Jewish life in the public sphere is under constant threat, and has become less visible. This is a situation that we cannot and will not accept. How we can work together to better fight antisemitism and protect Jewish life will be the subject of our conference tomorrow at the Federal Ministry of Justice. And as regrettable as it is that such a conference is needed at all, we are very fortunate to be joined by so many distinguished and knowledgeable guests.

 80 years ago today, the soldiers of the Red Army liberated the prisoners of Auschwitz concentration camp. But no one who has seen the photographs from that day would call it a day of rejoicing. Too stark is the horror, too great the suffering those people had to endure. Many of them did not live past the following days and weeks.

It is not a day of rejoicing, but it is a day of hope. It is a day that reminds us, when faced with the worst horrors imaginable, that even they can come to an end. It is a day that inspires us to do all we can to avert those horrors. It is a day that compels us to action in the firm belief that we can, in fact, overcome the cold and the dark.

Thank you very much!