[Salutation]

As Wim Wenders just showed, today, 80 years ago, Nazi Germany signed the unconditionally surrender to the allied forces in Reims in France bringing six years of war in Europe to an end. While fighting in Asia continued and the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still to come, in Europe the war was over.

A war with millions of victims, soldiers, civilians and millions of Jews mass murdered in the industrialised termination camps.

A war, leaving a whole continent devastated.

A war, the dictatorial regime in my country, unfortunately supported by a majority of Germans, started.

A war made possible by the collusion of dictators ignoring the interest of their countries, violating international law, vandalizing Human rights, dividing and occupying countries at their guise.

A war unfortunately encouraged by the longing for peace for our time rewarding aggressive behaviour and the use of force of Nazi Germany in Czechoslovakia.

A war whose first victims were those relying on the international order set up just two decades ago after the first World War
Europeans who believed in freedom and democracy. Our neighbours, friends and relatives in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, in Lithuania, in Latonia, in Estonia, in Belgium, in France, in the whole of Europe and beyond.

A war which brought immeasurable suffering to the peoples of the Soviet Union, to Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians, to all different nations through Hitler's barbaric campaign of extermination

With the end of the war and the victory over the German Army came the end of the National Socialism in Germany
Hope for freedom and the reestablishment of democracy was overwhelming everywhere on our continent.

Unfortunately, first this hope only realised in parts of Europe and dictatorial regimes maintained their emprise on the people, in Portugal, in Spain and in all those countries were the Stalinist Soviet Union continued to control societies and governments or even continued its occupation. Greece, a major victim of Nazi occupation, even suffered a civil war.

The victims of Hitler’s war in this part of our continent were again just objects of despotism, borders were randomly moved and people displaced.

And one of the signatories to the Hitler-Stalin-Pact continued to profit of this shameful agreement which ignored all established rules of international law.

It would be decades before our friends in Central Europe, in Poland, in Hungary in particular and our compatriots in the GDR were able to bring down the Berlin Wall and to regain their freedom.

A freedom Western Europeans and West Germans, like myself, had already enjoyed since this day in 1945 when the war came to end.
Today we commemorate 80 years of the end of World War II in Europe and celebrate this freedom. Celebrate our democracies, celebrate European Unity and common values.

[Music interlude]

We, Germans, are grateful to those who reached out their hands and helped us up aft this war to re-join the international community after the years of Nazi terror.

For us, “Never again” is not a political slogan, it is and in stands as an obligation towards the victims, to stand for democracy, the rule of law and the protection of human rights. In Germany, in Europe and everywhere on this globe, our common home.

With the new freedom and the democratic liberties came new constitutions.

In Germany, in particular, eminent men and few women, themselves victims of the Nazi regime, authored the Basic Law.
In my country, where patriotism after the war sounded too much like nationalism, the Basic Law became a nation builder, creating even a new term in the German language: “Verfassungspatriotismus” – constitutional patriotism to underline how much we appreciate the freedoms and liberties enshrined in it.

“Human dignity shall be inviolable.”

This sentence in itself says is all!

Today we celebrate the liberation from Nazi-Terror and the victory of “Human Dignity” over terror and dictatorship eighty years ago.
However, today these achievements are once again under attack.

Once again, the international order, the sacrosanct territorial integrity and political sovereignty enshrined in the UN Charter are seeming to become a mere concept of the past. Once again, the equality of states is fading away.

We are called upon to withstand.

We are called upon to preserve and to further develop the rules-based international order - on the basis of international law, the universal application of human rights and the United Nations Charter.

Against all those who attempt to replace this by the rule of the most powerful, the most reckless.

The 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe reminds us of the need to maintain peace in freedom and security.

The future lays in our hands.

“Yes, we can.”

We can preserve freedom, democracy and the rule of law.

If we stand together and support the victims to withstand all attacks on Human dignity.

If we withstand those who try to rewrite history and to appropriate the victory over National Socialism as a foil for their unjustifiable behaviours, like the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

This appropriation distorts and denies the fact that Russia broke the elementary rules of international order and international law in an unprecedented manner. The argument that Russia pursues a “noble” goal of denazifying and fighting against fascism not only lacks any basis, but also mocks the victims of National Socialist terror.

Hence, my country will provide Ukraine with comprehensive support so that it can effectively defend itself against the Russian aggressor who is waging an imperial, even a colonial war.

For us, as the German Federal President Dr. Richard von Weizsäcker put it, 40 years ago, for the first time, “8 May was a day of liberation.”

A day to commemorate the victims, a day to name the threats, but in the first place, a day to celebrate the achievements gained by this liberation.

I would therefore like to invite you to listen to the testimonies of Sierra Leoneans and Germans about what the rights and freedoms enshrined in the German constitution mean to them.

Thank you very much for your kind attention.