German woman offers touching gesture of love to Israeli students visiting Auschwitz

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Last week, a group of high school students from Israel were visiting the former Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz when a German woman named Ruth approached them with a sheet of yellow stickers.

“My people marked you with yellow stars, and I brought this from Germany with love,” Ruth told them.

“I cannot ask you for forgiveness of what my people committed to you, but as a sign of love and a stretched-out hand, I would like to put a heart on the place where my forefathers have put a yellow star,” she said.

She then started peeling heart-shaped stickers off the card and sticking them on the students’ jackets, bringing some of them to tears.

According to The Blaze, Ruth later told Zvi Schwartzman, the teacher who filmed the moving encounter, that it was her tenth visit to the death camp. She felt obligated to apologize to Auschwitz’s Jewish visitors for the atrocities committed by the generations of Germans that came before her.

And while her gesture was both moving and confusing — one chaperone asked why she felt so responsible for something she didn’t do — Ruth expressed a fear of the past repeating itself.

“There was a whole generation of survivors who spoke up with the message, ‘Never again,’” she told the students.

“We see what’s happening with Iran and that we’re not far from history repeating itself,” she said. “Today, I can’t say for sure it’s not going to happen again, but I want you to know that you’re not alone and that there are people outside of Israel who are still standing with your nation and who pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”

She then spoke to them in Israeli:

“Welcome to the land of the living.”