On 19 December, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier celebrated the second night of Hanukkah in Schloss Bellevue together with the descendants of Rabbi Posner of Kiel and his family.

After giving a speech, the Federal President lighted the candles of a special menorah with the grandchildren of Akiva and Rahel Posner.

Rahel Posner photographed this menorah on the windowsill of her home in Kiel in 1931. The swastika flag hanging from the local Nazi party headquarters across the street can be seen through the window. The photo has gained international renown, in Germany primarily through the January 2022 campaign #LichtZeigen (show light), in which the Federal President had taken part.

When the Posner family fled to Palestine in 1933 they took the menorah with them. It is now on permanent loan to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, where it is exhibited alongside the photo. The family takes it back for their annual Hanukkah celebrations.

The Posners’ descendants are visiting Germany for the first time in December 2022, having brought the menorah with them from Israel. Its candles were lit in Germany once again after an interval of exactly ninety years.