Steinmeier: Violence and injustice must not be forgotten

Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called for continued remembrance of those who suffered injustice and hardship in the Soviet Occupation Zone and in the GDR. “Prisons, camps, discrimination, psychological and physical violence, harassment, oppression of every kind—none of this must be forgotten; all of this must be remembered, recounted, preserved, and passed on,” said Steinmeier in a video message for the ceremony marking the 35th anniversary of the Union of Victims’ Associations of Communist Tyranny in Berlin.

“How quickly injustice is forgotten, how swiftly past times are romanticized,” warned Steinmeier. “How short our memory is—so that the perpetrators of the past or their modern-day counterparts have an easy time distorting history, the injustices that actually occurred and were suffered by thousands upon thousands.” The only way to counter this is through fearless and persistent efforts to preserve memory and remembrance, such as those carried out by the Union of Victims’ Associations of Communist Tyranny. 

Justice for the Victims of Imprisonment and Abuse

To ensure that justice is served for those who have experienced suffering, imprisonment, and abuse, it is sometimes necessary to take a much more vocal stand. “For it is essential to articulate and enforce political demands for recognition, rehabilitation, and compensation,” said Steinmeier.

“To this end, decision-makers must be repeatedly made aware of these issues, and public consciousness must be continually reawakened to what people suffered under the unjust systems—first in the Soviet Occupation Zone, then in the GDR—in the form of imprisonment, psychological breakdown, forced labor, expropriation, and brutal institutional care.”