On the occasion of Liberation Day, citizens of Rüdersdorf, members of the municipal council as well as its chairman, Ronny Neumann, and Mayor Sabine Löser gathered to lay a wreath at the memorial in Hennickendorf. After a musical introduction by flute player Lucy Krienke and a speech by the mayor, flowers were laid in memory of the victims of National Socialism.
Speech by the mayor, Sabine Löser, on 8 May 2021 on Liberation Day at the memorial in Hennickendorf:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
"Human dignity is inviolable. To respect and protect it is the duty of all state authority." Our Basic Law begins with these words and then continues in paragraph 2 of Article 1: "The German people therefore recognise inviolable and inalienable human rights as the foundation of every human community, of peace and of justice in the world."
This unequivocal appeal to the humanist values of our coexistence is both a mandate and a warning. The mothers and fathers of our Basic Law formulated it four years after the liberation from National Socialist rule. After the end of the unprecedented German crimes and the break with civilisation of the Shoah. The end of nights of bombing and tales of death.
We commemorate the victims of the National Socialists and at the same time thank the liberators - the Allies, but also all those who had the courage and bravery to stand up to the terror regime.
It is precisely this courage that we need today, when hatred and agitation can be heard again and again and ever louder. Be it in parliaments, at demonstrations or in our everyday lives. Our mission is to stand up resolutely wherever racism spreads, wherever the foundations of our coexistence, tolerance and acceptance are shaken and trampled underfoot. Because then as now: In the beginning was the word.
So let us see Liberation Day on the one hand as a day of deep gratitude and joy that we were given the chance to live in a peaceful and cosmopolitan Europe after 1945, but on the other hand also as a mission to defend precisely these achievements every day.