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.