Hape Kerkeling is set to speak at the memorial ceremony marking the 81st anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Kerkeling is the grandson of a former inmate, as the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation announced. His grandfather Hermann survived the horrors of the Buchenwald concentration camp, Kerkeling said.
“When I arrive at this place today, I’m not coming only to honor him. I am doing it because I am deeply alarmed by the current political developments in our country,” the 61-year-old comedian said. For him, Buchenwald is not a distant past but a stone-like warning. “Whoever looks away today or even applauds those who want to rewrite history makes themselves complicit.”
The commemorative ceremony at the Buchenwald memorial site is scheduled for April 12. In addition to Kerkeling, speakers include Thadäus König, president of the Thuringian state parliament (CDU), and Wolfram Weimer, the federal government’s Commissioner for Culture and the Media (CDU).
On April 13, according to the foundation, the ceremony will take place at the KZ memorial site Mittelbau-Dora. There, performers include singer Sebastian Krumbiegel and Thuringia’s Interior Minister Georg Maier (SPD).
Marcy Ellerton
