Awarding decorations to people for what they have done and do for others or for our country is one of the most joyful tasks for the German Federal President. In Berlin – and occasionally in other regions of Germany – I have the opportunity to pay tribute to such achievements. Today when I have the privilege of doing so on the other side of the world, 13,000 kilometres from Berlin, it is, of course, unusual but no less important. Also here in Chile, we encounter our past, the memory of the murder of millions of Jews committed by Germans. No matter where we go as Germans, our past comes with us, as does the responsibility rooted in this past. We cannot escape it, we cannot ignore it. It is part of us. The Shoah will remain part of us. It is a past with perpetrators and a past with victims.
And just as we believe that a line can never be drawn under our responsibility, there is hardly a place in the world, no matter how remote it may be, where this memory does not live on. Who would know this better than you two, Ms Wahrenberg and Mr Haymann! You are living your lives in service of remembrance and reconciliation. In recognition of your decades of work against forgetting, your engagement in promoting civic courage and humanity, I have the privilege of presenting you today with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Ms Wahrenberg, you were born in Berlin in 1930 and nine years later, after the horrors of the Night of the Pogrom on 9 November 1938, you emigrated to Chile with your parents. Just in time, as more than twenty members of your family who stayed, including your grandparents, were murdered during the Shoah. In 1970 you moved back to Berlin with your husband, arriving in a different Germany. A country that had finally started to engage with its past. When you returned to Chile thirteen years later, you took with you a different image of your former homeland to your new homeland.
You became a mediator between generations and a strong voice speaking out against hatred and exclusion. What is important are always the people themselves
, that is your firm conviction and precisely what you want to communicate, particularly to the younger generation. Enabling children and young people to get to know the past first hand is a matter very close to your heart. At the same time, we are living in an age in which knowledge about the Holocaust is dwindling amongst the younger generation all around the world and the number of survivors and witnesses is falling.
This makes it painfully clear to us just how valuable your commitment is. During countless visits to schools, with your talks and publications but above all with your open, charismatic manner, you reach out to young people and keep your story alive, your story as part of the darkest years of Germany’s past. We all know that we need to find new ways of preserving and recounting this memory. But we must not and will not wane in our efforts to pass the memory on to future generations so that what happened once does not happen again – this is my promise to you, Ms Wahrenberg!
You, Ms Wahrenberg, have made it your mission to remind people of the Shoah and give the victims and the survivors a voice, also here in Chile. A voice of reconciliation and understanding. You are thus an amazing role model for tolerance, humanity and civic courage. That is why you are being decorated today.
Mr Haymann, just like Ms Wahrenberg, you are to this day leading your life in service of reconciliation, remembrance and building a brighter future. Your own story is similarly a very special one. You were born in 1921, also in Berlin, and in 1938 were taken as a teenager as part of a Kindertransport to Haifa, back then in British-controlled Mandatory Palestine, and were one of the co-founders of Beit Zera kibbutz in the north of what is today the State of Israel.
Later, when the National Socialists were advancing in northern Africa, you volunteered your services to the British armed forces and, due to your comprehensive knowledge of Germany, you worked with the British intelligence services. As a courageous, fearless soldier, you were involved in the liberation of Rome and when the war was over in the arrest of National Socialists who had committed crimes in Italy. Seven years after fleeing Germany, you were transferred as a victorious British soldier from Rome to Berlin where you were reunited with your uncle who had survived Theresienstadt concentration camp. Your parents who had escaped to Chile were the only other Jewish family members to survive the Holocaust.
What joy you must have felt upon seeing your parents again here in Chile ten years later. Here, you carved out an impressive career for yourself as an interior designer. However, first and foremost, you kept telling your story of resistance, your journey from someone who was persecuted to your becoming a soldier. And, what is particularly impressive, you tell this story without resentment, without anger. Instead you advocate peace, working all your life to promote reconciliation and democracy.
By telling your story, by sharing your autobiography, you have made an important contribution to addressing the National Socialist past and provided future generations with a hugely important document depicting that era.
Ms Wahrenberg and Mr Haymann are shining examples who show us how important it is to stand up to hatred and intolerance particularly at this time. They have both made outstanding and admirable contributions to Germany, to our country. A country that once robbed them of their homeland and yet to which they have given back so much. We cannot be grateful enough for the wonderful gift they have bestowed upon us. Ms Wahrenberg, Mr Haymann, it is an honour for our country that you wear these decorations.
Thank you very much for being here today. And now I am delighted to have the privilege of presenting you with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. My warm congratulations on behalf of our entire country!
