Germany Looks Back on Pogroms and Saviors

BERLIN — Germany’s president opened a weekend of commemoration on Friday with a quiet visit to a simple museum dedicated to a Berlin manufacturer who, in a similar if smaller way than the better-known Oskar Schindler, saved Jews from the Nazis. The actions of Otto Weidt, the president noted, showed that everyone always has a choice about how to act in the face of evil.

The visit by President Joachim Gauck came on the eve of Nov. 9 — the date on which, in 1938, the Nazis killed, beat and rounded up thousands of Jews in pogroms and destroyed or damaged hundreds of synagogues, but also the anniversary of the joyous fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Anniversaries count in Europe, and nowhere more so than in the German capital, where the past is still very much present....