German Commemoration

MEMORANDUM

- With outrage, we have learned that the government of the Federal Republic of Germany is denying the murders of more than 20,000 German Jews 70 years ago in the Nazi Sobibór extermination camp.*

- The declaration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany was meant to justify Germany's refusal to participate in the costs of the museum's new construction in today's Sobibór.

- This declaration represents not only an insult to the obscured German victims of the former Nazi Sobibór extermination camp. It is just as insulting to the victims of all of the countries that had fallen victim to the Nazis, for whose suffering the Federal Republic of Germany bears full responsibility, as the successor state of the Nazi Regime ("Deutsches Reich").

- The Federal Republic of Germany is seeking not only to abdicate from its responsibilities for Sobibór.

- For memorials at other killing fields in Nazi-occupied Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Slovakia, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Serbia and Greece, the survivors and the descendents of Nazi victims are demanding that the Federal Republic of Germany assume its material responsibility.

.- We are drawing international public attention to the fact that the Federal Republic of Germany is being strongly criticized both from outside, but also from within, the country's borders.

- German civil society is criticizing the growing number of indications of a negationist government policy.

- For example, the largest European logistician, the Deutsche Bahn AG - under direct German government control - is spreading the allegation in German courts that there is "no intrinsic link" between the rail transports by the state-run railroad company to Nazi camps and the murders carried out within those camps.**

- This denial is - as in the case of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs - being used to ward off material responsibility.

- A semi-official foundation, under the control of the German Chancellery and the German Ministry of Finances, has also been attributed the purpose of warding off material responsibility. The so-called federal foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" (EVZ) attempts to influence activities inside Germany to prevent material restitution to Nazi-terror survivors.

- During the preparations for this year's commemoration in Sobibór, the Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" (EVZ) repeatedly rejected applications for grants to help finance the participation of German youth. Alongside the German Chancellery and the Ministry of Finances, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs is also represented in the foundation.

- The negationist character of state policy must be seen in the context of the political standing being assumed with growing clarity by Germany in today's Europe.

- The current economic dependence of nearly all European countries has emboldened the German criminals' heirs to abdicate from their material responsibility and to declarerestitution for these crimes as settled.

- In light of the mass murders perpetrated on our German compatriots and on all of the countries' citizens killed in Sobibór, 70 years ago, we commemorate the October 14, 1943 rebellion, as an exemplary and model of taking resolute action against German anti-Semitism and nationalist megalomania.

Sobibór, October 14, 2013
Train of Commemoration e.V.
Presidium

* Report televised in the „Kontraste“ TV Magazine, in the First Channel in German Television, Sept. 27, 2013, 21.45
** Deutsche Bahn AG (January 2013) Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main. Reference Number: Az-2-26 O 7/13