Malcolm Brabant:

To counter the corrosion of anti-Semitism, a Berlin government official of Palestinian descent has suggested that all new arrivals in Germany be required to visit concentration camps or other Holocaust memorials.

This is Sachsenhausen, north of Berlin, where 30,000 Russian POWs and other political prisoners were murdered. It's an essential component of schoolchildren's history curriculum.

At the moment, integration courses for migrants concentrate mainly on the German language, the legal system, Germany's culture and also its history. But the country's justice minister has said that he wants to see more emphasis on the Holocaust in these courses.

And he's being backed up by the head of the country's Jewish community, who says that anyone who wants to live in the country permanently must identify with Germany's history.

Sachsenhausen earned its place in the pantheon of industrial extermination not least because it was a training ground for S.S. officers who accelerated the Holocaust in other death camps.

The guest of honor on Holocaust Day recently was 93-year-old Bernt Lund, a former Norwegian resistance fighter, who survived two years in Sachsenhausen.