[The Holocaust Memorials in Berlin. Credits: Shi-hyoung Lee]

Words of condolences are heard as Germany begins International Holocaust Memorial Day.

The Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27th is a day to mourn the Jewish people who were killed during the Holocaust in World War 2.

Many citizens showed respect for this day, as they put candles next to their windows in the evening at 9pm.

After being defeated in World War 1, Germany suffered from great poverty and an economic crisis.

However, they were able to quickly regain power through the reign of Adolf Hitler.

Adolf Hitler was the leader of the Nazi Party; in 1933, he became the Chancellor of Germany.

Hitler implemented various policies to trigger the rapid development of Germany.

For example, he propelled construction of the Autobahn, the German highway system, to increase jobs for the population.

As the country showed noticeable economic growth during Hitler’s reign, more and more citizens started to have strong faith in the Chancellor.

Despite this, Hitler also adhered to a very dangerous ideology, which was that only ‘pure’ Germans (those whose ancestors lived in Germany for hundreds of years) deserved to live in Germany.

This ideology led to anti-semitism, which resulted in hatred towards Jews and them taking the blame for the fall of Germany in the first place.

When the Nazi Party gained complete power over Germany and started World War 2, they started a genocide, aiming to exterminate the Jewish population in all of Europe.

The genocide resulted in the murder of over six million Jews, a majority of them suffering in concentration camps where they were treated inhumanely.

Many were murdered by poisonous gas, while others suffered from malnourishment, disease, and were used in medical experiments.

Since the end of World War 2 and until today, Germany still feels great shame about the Nazi Party’s horrible actions in the past, and the country is taking great action to prevent anti-semitism in every possible way.

This is why Holocaust Memorial Day is a particularly important day in Germany.

Holocaust Memorial Day is on January 27th because 79 years ago from that day, Auschwitz, which was the biggest Nazi concentration camp, was liberated.

Olaf Scholz, Germany’s current Chancellor, has said “Never again’ is every day” in a recent podcast, insisting that people must always keep in mind that a disaster of a scale like the Holocaust must never happen again.

Meanwhile, the German Chancellor also mentioned the political party Alternative für Deutschland, also known as AfD.

AfD is a far-right political party that is strongly anti-immigrantism, and anti-Muslim.

Therefore, people are insisting that AfD is highly linked to neo-Nazism.

Hundreds of thousands of German citizens protested against AfD by marching in the streets of Berlin a week before Holocaust Memorial Day, showing once again the responsibility they believe they have in preventing the rise of Nazism.

Along with the strong relationship between Germany and the Holocaust, the nation is putting a lot of effort into remembering the tragic extermination back in World War 2.