Photo: AFP/GETTY
Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday that Adolf Hitler’s rise to power 80 years ago should go on reminding Germans that democracy and freedom cannot be taken for granted.
Mrs Merkel was speaking at the inauguration of an exhibition in Berlin to commemorate eight decades since Hitler became chancellor on January 30, 1933 – an anniversary which has aroused much interest in Germany.
“Human rights don’t assert themselves. Freedom doesn’t preserve itself all alone and democracy doesn’t succeed by itself,” Mrs Merkel said.
“That must be a constant warning for us, Germans,” she added referring to Hitler’s arrival at the chancellery.
The exhibition, “Berlin 1933. On the Path to Dictatorship”, is on a site charged with history as the former headquarters of the Gestapo, the secret police of the Nazi regime.
It now houses The Topography of Terror, an open-air documentation centre whose exhibition traces Hitler’s first months in power through photos, newspapers and posters.
Mrs Merkel noted that it only took six months for the dictator to “wipe out all the diversity” of German society.
The Telegraph has the full article
