JAKARTA: Amid all the controversy over the Japanese Government’s decision on Tuesday to approve the revised New History Textbook, intended for use in the country’s junior high schools, it is certainly worthwhile to read again the speech of German Chancellor Gerard Schroeder during a ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in January.
The Asahi Shimbun quoted Schroeder as saying: “The past cannot be overcome. It is the past. But its traces and, above all, the lessons to be learned from it extend to the present. We have a special responsibility to engrave Germany’s past in our hearts.”
