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The world must never allow the horrors of the Nazis to fade from memory, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told a ceremony commemorating Monday's 60th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp.
"The death of millions, the suffering of the survivors, the torment of the victims - this is the basis of our task to create a better future," he told an emotional gathering of survivors from the infamous death camp in eastern Germany.
"We cannot change history, but this country can learn a lot from the deepest shame of our history," he said.
"We will not allow lawlessness and violence, anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia to have another chance," vowed the German chancellor.
Schroeder and US veterans came to the camp memorial outside Weimar for the commemoration, which kindled vivid memories for the survivors, most of them in their 70s and 80s.
Schroeder recalled that Weimar stands for Germany's classical cultural heritage - Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the most revered German author and playwright, had his home there - and said the Nazis had turned it into "coldness and cruelty."
"I bow before you, the victims and their families," he said at the Weimar National Theatre, addressing Buchenwald survivors in the audience.
Though Buchenwald was not expressly built for mass killing as Auschwitz was, the camp was just as much part of the Nazis' effort to wipe out anyone deemed un-German.
(China Daily April 12, 2005)
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