Autor: FIR | 27. 1. 2023
All over the world, January 27, the day of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by the Red Army, is observed as a day of remembrance for the victims of Nazi barbarism. In Germany, the anti-fascist associations declared more than 25 years ago:
“Whoever commemorates January 27, 1945, must also remember January 30, 1933. Causes and origins of fascism are necessary components of any remembrance work. … The remembrance of the victims must be connected with the remembrance of who the perpetrators were. That means: naming the guilty and the beneficiaries of the establishment of Nazi rule in Germany and the unleashing of the war.”
In this sense, the FIR also recalls the handing over the power to Hitler’s government on January 30, 1933, which created the conditions to establish fascist rule in Germany, culminating in the fascist war of expansion and the murder of millions of people in the concentration and extermination camps, thus giving birth to Auschwitz.
In earlier years, Hitler was readily regarded as an “operational accident of history,” and the term “seizure of power” signaled that January 30 had come “fatefully” upon the country. This suppressed the realization of which social forces had an interest in the establishment of fascist rule. In fact, it was influential groups of the social elites - right-wing parties, big businessmen and bankers, big landowners, academics, churches, representatives of the military - who had an interest in transforming the Weimar Republic in the sense of an authoritarian anti-parliamentary system of rule. These power groups had opted for the most reactionary variant of bourgeois rule, which was now to be implemented with the appointment of Hitler’s government on January 30, 1933.
This handing over the power set the course for the establishment of fascist rule. Reich President Paul von Hindenburg issued “emergency decrees” that cleared the way for assembly bans, newspaper bans and arrests of political opponents. On February 4, the Reichstag was dissolved. Until new elections, already held under illegal conditions, Hitler’s government operated without parliamentary control. SA, SS and “Stahlhelm” were used as “auxiliary police.” The expansion of the state’s persecution apparatus in the first weeks of Hitler’s government created the instruments for terror and persecution of political dissidents. In particular, the labor movement - its parties, unions and cultural organizations - was persecuted. Mass arrests of over 10,000 political opponents of the Nazi regime after the staged Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933 were the visible expression of the establishment of a terrorist rule in Germany. On April 1, the first state-organized boycott actions against Jewish people took place.
The FIR reminds however also of the fact that German anti-fascists had warned already before 1933 against this fascist barbarism. Despite persecution, from 1933 to 1945 many women and men, at risk to their freedom, health or even their lives, stood up for anti-fascist convictions, for those persecuted for political or racial reasons and against the preparation of war. They are a glory in German history.
Those who commemorate the handing over the power to the Nazi government today are not only commemorating an historical event. Today, too, the question arises as to how the politically and economically powerful deal with democratic parliamentary principles. The political rise of the AfD and its attempts to relativize Nazi crimes also make it clear that the memory of January 30, 1933 is not just a historical issue. The defense of democratic and social freedoms in Germany and Europe as well as social resistance against right-wing developments, anti-democratic and racist tendencies and political forces that propagate this form of fascist crisis management and rule remain topical. German anti-fascists formulated the clear slogan in this regard many years ago: “Fascism is not an opinion, but a crime!”
In the sense of the legacy of the survivors, as it is called in the oath of the prisoners of Buchenwald from April 19, 1945, the FIR and its member federations work also 90 years after the beginning of the fascist rule in Germany for “the destruction of Nazism with its roots” and the “building of a new world of peace and freedom”.
International Federation of Resistants Fighters (FIR) - Association of Antifascists
