 blew through the Jewish communities in Germany. The first crusade hit the Jewish communities hard. It brought suffering, it brought torment. And this trauma created Ashkenaz as the new practices of remembering. The old treasure of prayers was joined by a troubling prayer, which is part of the Jewish cycle of the year, the East Corp prayer. In its desperation, in its pain, the Jewish people addressed God in order to transfer this commemoration to God. As if they were to say, God, remember the things that we cannot forget. Ladies and gentlemen, as president of the state of Israel, the state of the Jewish people, I would like to open my address with the East Corp prayer, dedicated to the memory of our brothers and sisters who were killed, slaughtered and annihilated by the Nazis. Please rise for the East Corp prayer. Remember God, the names of our brothers and sisters Israel, slaughtered and annihilated by the Nazis. The names of six hundred thousands of people of Israel. They were killed and killed and slaughtered and killed and killed by the Nazis. And the old meetings that were fought against the Holy God. Remember God, the name of their church. The church of the Holy God, Israel and the people of Israel from all over the world. And in the end, they were killed and killed. The victims and the victims of their lives and their death did not die. And we were in peace with them and said, Amen. President of the Federal Republic, my good friend Walter Steinmeier, and his wife, Elke Budenbender, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, President of the Bundestag, Bebel Bas. Thank you very much for your moving words. President of the Bundesrat, Budo Ramelow. President of the Federal Constitutional Court, Stefan Habat. Dear representatives from all walks of life here in Germany. Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you, but I do not stand alone. I stand as an envoy, as the President of the State of Israel. A sovereign, democratic, national state of the Jewish people. And the realization, the embodiment of the prayers of numerous generations. I stand here as a proud son of the Jewish people. I stand here as the representative of the ninth generation of Rabbi Hilman, who was a Rabbi of a community here in Germany. He was a successor to Rabbi Katzner from Hamburg and the surrounding communities. I'm here as the President of the State, and I'm here with many dreams and crises, with pain and healing, with destruction and independence. That are inextricably woven. And I'm here to share a message, to share a commandment. Apart from the Ten Commandments, and I love you next as you would love yourself, is maybe the most moral and the most obligating commandment for every Jew. And that is, remember, the Jewish nation is a nation of remembrance. Remembering is an indispensable part of our identity. When I step on German ground, I have memories. I'll take the picture album of my people from my backpack, and there's countless images of this country. Pictures of summits, pictures of the deepest abyss. And this is what I want to talk to you about here today. I want to talk about the past and the future. And I quote, there's a stone set on my desk. It says, Amen. It's a triangular piece, a fracture of a wall of a Jewish cemetery. Destroyed a thousand years ago in the city where I was born. A single word, Amen, etched into that stone. It's hard, it's definite, it's a stone, witnessing everything that ever happened and that will never happen again. May it be like this, Amen. These are the words that Israeli poet Yulam H. He wrote. He was from the city of Jerusalem. He was born in the Bavarian city of Wurzburg as Ludwig Pfeiffer. And it seems that with these words he wants to navigate between pain and pride in this country and he wants to bridge this chasm between his place of birth and his homeland. Throughout hundreds, thousands of years, Germany was a homeland for our people. It was comfortable. It was creative. It was a homeland where the Jewish people could prosper in culture, in spirit, in philosophy, in politics, in science, in many other areas. The leading rabbis, the most influential rabbis in the history of our people, grew up here in Germany. This is where Rabbi Hashiaki grew up. The most significant rabbis of the Jewish people were selected. Rabbi von Rotenberg and many others called Harry Shereem, the first ones. Rabbi Samson Hirsch and other members of the last generation. Germany was the home of many outstanding people of Jewish culture, spirit, the culture. Joseph Mendelssohn, Joseph Geiger and many others. Albert Einstein, Paul Ehrlich, Emi Nötter, Berthard Auerbach, Kurt Weil, Elze Laska-Schüler. And here we have to mention the pioneers of social work, Sidi Wonsky as Rosengu, and the influential Zionists who grew up in Germany and were able to flourish here, maybe in Swedish Karussia, Moses Hess, Levaburg and many, many others. In all walks of life. All of these people were born here, they were educated, they were trained here, their personality was created here, they made a contribution for the Jewish people to prosper, for the German nation to prosper. So this country is their country in the deepest meaning. It is embedded in our DNA, the DNA of my people. But, ladies and gentlemen, this is no secret, this land, Germany, was the place where the greatest atrocities were committed, that the Jewish people had to suffer. It started with pogroms, uprisings, massacres, destruction of entire Jewish communities that recurred over thousands of years, the way up to the deepest abyss of humanity, the Shoah. The history of mankind knows no comparable example to the atrocities committed by the Nazis and their henchmen. Never was a country like Germany responsible for the loss of all humanity, for the loss of all compassion. They were responsible for the intention to cruelly exterminate an entire people. My father, my recipes, the sixth president of the State of Israel, was among the commanders who liberated the concentration camps from the claws of the Nazi animals. And I will never forget the words he used to describe what he saw. The skeletons in striped prison suits this hell on Earth. People jammed together in barracks. Like you said, Madam President, he traveled to Germany in the year 1987 as the first president of Israel and visited his visit in the death camp of Bergen Belsen four decades after he had seen it at the end of the war. During his visit he said the following, I do not bring forgiveness, I do not bring forgetting only the dead have the right to forgive. Only the dead have the right to forget. The living have no right to forget. This is what he said in his testament, I do not carry with me in my heart. 35 years have passed since then, and a couple of hours from now, I will end my state visit in the camp of Bergen Belsen. And I would like to repeat his words before you as a representative of the German people from all political parties. I declare that Jewish people does not forget, not just because of our obligation towards past generations, also from our obligation towards generations of the future. It is not easy to actually do this remembering because it is shattering, it is complex, it is hard, it is painful, it is painful for Germans because there will always be people who will deny everything, who feel as if they were accused who just want to see the past, the past, later rest. And in a very different way, it is also very complex and painful in Israel too. Remembering the Shoah is an indispensable part of our national identity. A people that holds these deepest abysses, these horrible experiences in its collective memory, that is not a people like any other. But despite all that, even if we cannot meet in our past of remembrance, we still have to meet. We have to give meaning to remembrance. Which means remembering is an obligation, it's a moral obligation, it is a responsibility. You cannot bridge the past, you cannot do away with the past, but the future, the future is in our hands, and it holds great responsibility. So it belongs to both of us, it belongs to us, it belongs to you, because only together can we give meaning to remembrance. Only by meeting, only by deepening relations, only by holding up this mutual obligation towards freedom, humanity, democracy, apart from our obligation to freedom, security, and the prosperity of the Jewish people. Both our peoples will give meaning to remembrance and it will be used as an example for the entire mankind. Ladies and gentlemen, history links the Jewish people and the state of Israel with the German people. It is a link of memory, of meaning, which takes place in the past, in the present, but also in the future. If we look at the past, we have to still discuss research, the Shoah. We have to look at what happened in a realistic way. We have to fight against everybody who denies it. We have to turn every stone in order to try and understand what cannot be understood. If we look at the present, the main task that obligates us every day to not ignore hate, be it on the web, be it in social networks, be it in the streets, be it in the political centers. We have to fight anti-Semitism and racism wherever we encounter it, decisively, without any compromise. We have to seek the way that we want to walk together. We have to seek the way that we walk together, oriented towards freedom, justice, mutual respect, tolerance and partnership. If we look at the future, ladies and gentlemen, I would say that this obligation towards the future is a privilege. The partnership between Germany and Israel is known all over the world. It is our task to use this in order to create a glorious future, not just for our countries but for the entire world. The State of Israel is an example of reconstruction of success, of overwhelming contribution for humanity in culture, in medicine, in academics, in science and many others. Throughout the years, Israel has co-operated and established partnerships with many European countries and many sectors. We participate in efforts to solve crises worldwide, among others, the climate crisis. My country plays an important role when it comes to finding ways how to deal with the climate crisis to develop new technologies. In the Middle East, Israel is the engine when it comes to established partnerships in the region. We have new peace agreements. We have normalization. We have dialogue. We have rapprochement. And in this, we have created good, neighborly relations and growth in our region that we've never seen before. We never shied away from criticism. We never ignored criticism or tried to suppress criticism. But one thing we will demand from our critics to check everything and to make sure that the criticism is embedded in truth. We extend our hand to everybody, to our neighbors and deepening our relationship with our neighbors. That is a real thing. And that refers to the entire region. That is the truth, too. Israel has always and will always strive to establish neighborly relations with all states and peoples of the Middle East. And this effort will continue. And it is, of course, also true for our Palestinian neighbors. This is part of the hope and the objective that we will never give up, because this obligates us and Palestinians to face reality, to undertake every efforts to make this future a good future. Our Palestinian neighbors have to fight terror and have to seize terror right away. Just yesterday, President Steinmeier and myself spoke to relatives and leader representatives of Germany and Israel. And when we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the attack of the Munich Olympic Games where 11 Israeli athletes were killed, who wanted to participate in these games, the Palestinian terror organizations are responsible for these horrific killings, a crime that not just hit the very principles and foundations of human dignity, but also hit the entire spirit of the sports and the spirit of Olympic Games. And the same holds true for other similar horrific terrorist attacks that still are being committed. And for that, President Steinmeier, Chancellor Scholz, I would like to thank you as well as I'd like to thank the Federal Republic and the government of the State of Bavaria who enabled this exchange with the victims' relatives. What is embedded is a historic investigation of what happened to bring out the truth in order to alleviate this pain that the people affected will always hold. Thank you for this very moving ceremony that took place in Munich with the Olympic Associations, together with young people from Israel and Germany, together with the families of the victims. Ladies and gentlemen, Israel is part of the international efforts to keep radical forces at bay who spread terror and mistrust and who threaten every citizen in this world. During our times, dark, hateful forces led by Iran do not only threaten the State of Israel in the Middle East, but the entire world order. And from this place here in Berlin, this important place in Berlin, I call upon the nations of the world to decisively oppose Iran and its plan to develop nuclear weapons. Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a member state of the United Nations that every day calls for the annihilation of another member state of the United Nations. That is unacceptable. Threats and actions to destroy Israel are not acceptable. And let me say this quite clear. Whoever denies the Shoah, who acts from hatred and aggression, who denies the right of existence of the State of Israel has no right to claim to be party to any negotiations, does not have the right to claim any financial support or any other form of support. The international community has to stand on the right side of history. They have to formulate clear preconditions, have to decide on clear sanctions. They have to build a wall between Iran and nuclear capabilities. Stand with resolve. Do not give up. The State of Israel will defend itself with all means. And I call upon the entire world to not just stand, I live by. Ladies and gentlemen, dear representatives of the German people, Germany and the German people have developed and rebuilt the entire nation after the Second World War in a very admirable way. Germany is a known country. It is a responsible, it's a leading country in many areas of the world. It's the initiator of a never-seen uprising, economic upswing here in the entire world. Germany is a leading force in Europe, in NATO. And it is now that this becomes particularly invisible when it comes to supporting the Ukraine and the inviolability of Ukraine. Germany will play a leading role when it comes to finding a solution to this terrible tragedy. All of us who wanted to see the suffering end it as soon as possible, we want to see freedom and stability of return to Ukraine and in all of Europe. What Germany achieved in the social field, equal rights, taking care of the weaker parts of society, erecting infrastructure, all that comes together as a picture of humanity and the dignity of mankind and this can serve as an example to all of Europe. And it is held in high esteem throughout the world. The esteem that Germany enjoys throughout the world and makes it a leading nation in the world is based on one thing, is based on the obligation to stand up to its past but also an obligation towards the future of mankind. Germany has proven and continues to prove that it takes this culture of remembrance seriously. At the same time, it puts major efforts in innovation, in entrepreneurship, in science and technology, in research and many other fields. All areas on which our future depends. The State of Israel is proud to be a partner of the State of Germany and we cherish the friendship of this deep alliance between our two countries. The German contribution towards security and the stability of Israel is held in high esteem in our country. I'm convinced that our joint value is the deep friendship between our two countries would continue to foster this relationship, this partnership so that we continue along this path that Germany and Israel walk together side by side hand in hand towards a prosperous future. Ladies and gentlemen, the Israeli poet I quoted at the beginning of my speech, my speech, my people who live, those are the components of his name, again refers to the stone on his desk in Jerusalem, which is part of a gravestone in the Jewish cemetery. At the end of my speech, I would like to again quote from a poem and I want to express my hope that these words can be the foundation for our partnership. Let us nourish by the past and the future. These are his words. This stone on my desk gives me peace. It is a stone of truth, immovable, wiser than any stone of the wise. It is a stone, a fracture of a gravestone. It is a stone of witness of everything that ever happened and of everything that will ever be. It is a stone of amen and a stone of love. Amen, amen. This is how it should be. Thank you. President Herzog there in his first official visit as president of the State of Israel