Japan cannot move on from the past until it faces up to it squarely
- By Cai Hong
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E-mail China Daily, June 29, 2015
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[By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn] |
On Friday, the final day of their visit to Germany, British Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip visited the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which British troops liberated 70 years ago.
The camp, where some 200,000 people were estimated to be exported and around 52,000 died, and which German President Joachim Gauck has called "a place of horror" and "an abyss" in the heart of his country, is now a place of remembrance in Germany.
Queen Elizabeth II said her presence underlined the complete reconciliation that has taken place between Britain and Germany.
Germany has had the courage to face up to this part of its history and by showing sincere remorse has reconciled with the countries that Nazi Germany invaded.
When West Germany Chancellor Willy Brandt fell on his knees on the site of the Warsaw ghetto in 1970, it was a moving acknowledgment of a great crime.
At the 2004 ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder reportedly wiped tears from his eyes. Schroeder, who was born in 1944 and whose father was killed fighting for a lost cause near the end of the war, was the first German leader invited to the regular gatherings of the leaders of the WWII allies on the French coast where one of the major battles of the war was fought.
