Anyone who ignores such a development and adopts an attitude of passivity creates injustice and provokes catastrophe. Today's commemoration calls on us to commit ourselves to keeping this warning in mind. One last word more. Weimar showed that democracy is not secure if the consensus governing the basic values of our society is lost. A democracy requires continuous and meticulous care, dialogue in the place of hate-filled animosity, an openness to the welfare of the community in the place of egotistical withdrawal in pursuit of purely personal interests.
Democracy can only function if the institutions desired and recognised by the people are respected.
Finally I should like to express thanks. Firstly we must thank those people and nations who fought for peace, and put their lives at risk for a free and democratic Europe. Secondly we must thank those men and women in our own country who did so much, at a difficult time for our country and its future, in plain clothes or in uniform, at work, in the family or on the frontier. They were welded together at a time of the greatest danger by their determination to form a community. In different times, with quite different problems, that ought to remain an example to us all.