November 9th is a day of remembrance. The Kristallnacht of 1938, which marked the transition from the discrimination of German Jews to their systematic extermination. In these weeks, another people finds itself threatened with imminent to medium-term extermination: 3 million Christian Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Republic of Armenia. 105 years after the “first genocide of the 20th century” (Pope Francis), the Murder of 1,5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey and Azerbaijan are preparing to continue the destruction of Armenian lives. Thousands of Armenians have already been killed in recent weeks.
Germany has many reasons and opportunities to prevent this: its historical complicity in the genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 1915, its very close (economic) relations with Turkey, and, last but not least, its EU Council Presidency. As Foreign Minister Maas put it, in the Bundestag, to generously offer two million euros to a people attacked with German weapons instead of immediate sanctions against the attackers, will find its way into the history books.
What can one expect from a federal government that, knowing that Genocide and organ theft to millions of Uyghurs and Falun Gong, only cares about doing good business with the regime in China? Not even the repression of Hong Kong and the criminal cover-up of the coronavirus, which enabled its global spread, could change that.
And what can we expect from the media in Germany? They have learned a thing or two about human rights in their own unique way: Every year, the foundation of one of Germany's wealthiest families awards the "Herbert Quandt Media Prize," named after the Nazi entrepreneur and concentration camp planner. It honors the "life's work" of the company leader who would stop at nothing. At €50.000, the prize is particularly generous. It's having an impact: After SPIEGEL donated the prize money it received to the memorial for the Quandt factory's concentration camp subcamp in 2009, A SPIEGEL editor took the photo in 2017 gladly accept the five-figure prize money for themselves. Likewise, their colleagues from SWR, NDR and ZDF this year and those of BR, WDR, BILD, World, Time, FAZ and SZ in previous years.
November 9th is a day of remembrance, including the consequences of indifference to injustice.
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