Anniversary: “The gift that Jews have found a home here again”
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|On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Central Council of Jews, Chancellor Friedrich Merz acknowledged the continued presence of those once persecuted by the Nazis in the country. He emphasized that criticism of Israel is permissible, but should never be a pretext for anti-Semitism.
At the beginning of his speech, the Chancellor described a small painting that hung on loan to Berlin's Bode Museum this summer. It depicts a figure with wings and a human face, with wide-open eyes and a mouth. The painting by Paul Klee is called "Angelus Novus." The German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin once bought it and called the figure in it the "Angel of History." This angel, he said, sees the past as "a single catastrophe that ceaselessly piles rubble upon rubble and hurls them at its feet. It would like to linger, awaken the dead, and piece together what has been shattered."
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