On the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism
27th January 2026
“It takes more courage to love than to hate.” This sentence, taken from the Berlin exhibition “Believing in a Future. Jewish Biographies in the Parliamentary Founding Generation after 1945. A Documentary Approach”, was spoken by Jeannette Wolff, a Jewish Holocaust survivor and one of the first members of the German Bundestag.
The Executive Board of our Study Group on Intergenerational Consequences of the Holocaust (formerly PAKH – Psychotherapeutic Working Group for Those Affected by the Holocaust) was invited to the exhibition opening at the German Bundestag on 27 January 2026, the “Day of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism”. The board was represented by Peter Pogany-Wnendt.
Jeannette Wolff’s words are as moving as they are timely. Social and political discourse in Germany, as well as political action worldwide, reveal a growing lack of dialogue, empathy, and respect for human dignity. Antisemitism, anti-Romani racism, hostility toward Muslims, and other forms of group-based hatred are increasingly expressed openly and without shame. Where, in all of this, is the courage to love?
Precisely the remembrance of the victims of Nazi terror should remind us not only to invoke humanity and human rights, but to live by them. “Without love, humanity could not survive a single day,” warned the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm decades ago.
At the exhibition opening, politicians whose Jewish ancestors were persecuted and murdered during the Holocaust entered into dialogue: Karin Prien (Federal Minister for Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, CDU), Gregor Gysi (Member of the Bundestag, The Left), Jerzy Montag (former Member of the Bundestag, Alliance 90/The Greens), and Nina Ruge (author and journalist). In many of their families, this history was shrouded in silence—either to avoid confronting “deep grief” or in order not to “stand out” as Jews. Yet the children sensed that “something in our family was different.”
It is rare for politicians to make their wounds and family histories public. They refrained from ritualized formulas of admonition and instead revealed biographical ruptures, emotions, and ambivalence. This was precisely the special strength of the event: it felt authentic, healing, and encouraging.
From our decades of dialogue work at PAKH, we know that remembrance cannot exist without emotion. Emotional legacies cannot be suppressed through rituals, nor overcome through silence. Remembrance without reference to one’s own family history remains abstract. Those who avoid confronting their own painful personal involvement—consciously or unconsciously—contribute to forgetting. Unprocessed transgenerational emotions continue to have an effect, among the descendants of perpetrators as well as of the persecuted, and can unleash their potentially destructive power at any time.
Awareness of one’s own family history is a prerequisite for successful mourning. For this reason, we hope that political leaders will find the courage at future commemorations to speak also about perpetrators within their own families. We also hope that political speeches—at the highest level, including by the Federal President—will include all groups persecuted under the Nazi regime. The descendants of all victim groups continue to suffer from the consequences of Nazi terror to this day. Many once again experience fear of exclusion and persecution. Current political developments, particularly in the United States, make this painfully clear.
Holocaust survivor Tova Friedman, keynote speaker at the commemorative ceremony in the German Bundestag, stated: “History teaches us that hatred never remains confined to a single people. When antisemitism is tolerated, democratic values themselves are weakened.” Bundestag President Julia Klöckner also recalled Article 1 of the German Basic Law: “Human dignity shall be inviolable.” The Holocaust showed what happens when people are stripped of their dignity. The National Socialists declared Jews, Sinti and Roma, Slavs, homosexuals, resistance fighters, political opponents, so-called “asocials,” people with mental illnesses, and many others to be “subhuman,” persecuted them, and murdered them. In their bigotry, they themselves lost all humanity. Death and destruction were their guiding principles.
Today, once again, we are witnessing power claims being enforced through violence, human rights being violated, and international law being broken. In Germany, too, forces are gaining strength that attack democracy, humanity, and solidarity.
Let us not be discouraged by this. Those who spread hatred have lost the capacity to love. In the Study Group on the Intergenerational Consequences of the Holocaust (PAKH), we are committed to compassionate, trustworthy and reason-guided dialogue. For us, commemoration does not merely mean remembering, but living the courage to love today and actively standing up for human rights.
The PAKH Executive Board
Peter Pogany-Wnendt · Alexandra Senfft
Sybille Ellinger-Weber · Franziska Schulz · Ute Wnendt
2026, January 29