Merz fights tears as he recalls Nazi crimes, declares ‘war’ on antisemitism

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz appeared to be fighting back tears on Tuesday as his voice broke during an address in which he recalled the atrocities committed against the Jewish people by Nazi Germany.

Speaking at the reopening ceremony of a Munich synagogue destroyed by the Nazis almost 87 years ago, Merz said he was appalled that Jew-hatred had flared up again in Germany, the DPA agency reported.

“I would like to tell you how ashamed I am of this: as chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, but also as a German, as a child of the post-war generation, as a child who grew up with ‘never again’ as a mission, as a duty, as a promise,” Merz explained in his speech.

He appeared to become emotional as he turned to Rachel Salamander, who led the synagogue’s restoration and whose parents survived the Holocaust, on the question of why nobody saved the Jewish people.

“In one of your books, you wrote that as a child, you kept asking this one question of whether no one came to help the Jews,” the chancellor said.

“Without holding on to the hope for a positive answer, as you went on to write, without clinging to the child’s naive expectation of help, we would be lost as human beings,” continued Merz, as he seemed to battle tears.

“Even today, we must allow ourselves to feel horror at the fact that most of us did not, in fact, help,” according to the German leader. He praised those who survived and chose to return to Germany and “build a new home there again, in the country from which the Shoah originated.”

Merz also said Berlin had “turned a blind eye for too long” to the fact that many refugees who arrived in Germany in recent decades “were socialized in countries of origin where antisemitism is virtually state doctrine, where hatred of Israel is taught even to children.”

The Christian Democratic Union leader said that he hopes “that Jewish life in Germany will one day get by without police protection again.”

“I therefore declare war on all forms of old and new antisemitism in Germany on behalf of the entire federal government of the Federal Republic of Germany,” the chancellor told attendees at the event.

Architect Gustav Meyerstein built the Reichenbach Schul in 1931 in the New Objectivity style. Severely damaged during the 1938 Kristallnacht Nazi pogroms, the synagogue was provisionally repaired in 1947 and used until Munich’s Ohel Jakob Synagogue opened in 2006.

The Reichenbach Schul subsequently stood unused for years.

At the initiative of Salamander, the house of worship was restored in the same minimalist style. The renovation features simple wooden benches, colored walls and stained glass windows portraying ritual objects and Psalms, aiming to remain faithful to the building’s historic character.

Benny Gantz, the leader of Israel’s Blue and White opposition party, thanked Merz for his “just and historic commitment to fighting the spreading cancer of antisemitism,” particularly in the wake of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in the Jewish state south.