United Nations, New York, 29 January 2007
Today we mark the second observance of the international day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, a day which the international community established to show its global commitment to the eternal remembrance of the Holocaust – victims and survivors – and to ensure that genocide never again occurs.
The Holocaust dealt a devastating blow to mankind’s faith in the human experience. The Nazis’ assault on the sanctity of life, their brutal systematic murder of six million Jews, their depraved aspirations to wipe out an entire people, are some portraits of the harrowing reality which led the world to create this United Nations and adopt the principles enshrined in its Charter.
And yet today on the sixty-second anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz – a symbol of the darkest moments of human history – it remains clear that in some parts of the world the lessons of Holocaust have not been learned.
Today, amid vivid memories of death camps and death marches, amid heroic survivors sharing stories of survival, amid shattered dreams still being rebuilt, a Member State of this world body threatens to wipe out another sovereign state.
Today, that same Member State tries to rewrite history, denying the Holocaust, denying the Nazi genocide, denying the painful fate of six million Jews and others in Europe, denying the value of human life and the very founding principles of this world body.
The Holocaust is an emphatic truth. Its pain was and is real. But its implications are all too great to be carried solely by the Jewish people. Its lessons are universal, which is why the nations of the world previously supported a resolution on Holocaust remembrance last year, and supporting one on Holocaust denial this year.
None of that can be denied.
Ladies and Gentleman,
We live in a world where anti-Semitism is rapidly rising, where hate fills children’s textbooks, where racism and xenophobia still run rampant, where spiritual and religious leaders incite to violence and preach animus of others simply because they are different.
We live in a world fractured by disagreement. Our ability to respond to peril is paralyzed by the inability, sometimes even the unwillingness, to react, to rise above the divisions of politics and embrace the universality of values.
We live in a world that once saw the atrocities of Auschwitz and Birkenau, only to have seen later a Cambodia and a Rwanda, and which is now silently witnessing a Darfur.
The call must go forth from this General Assembly, from the houses of parliament, from the presidential palaces, and from the streets of capitals all across the world, that the lessons of the Holocaust and the memory of the Holocaust are not negotiable. They are part and parcel of the personal memory that must become, as the generation of the Holocaust gets more distant, our collective history. They are the essence of our shared, global values.
Committing ourselves to the eternal memory of the Holocaust means we must also chart the course beyond remembrance. It means an unqualified commitment to human rights and human dignity. It means educating children to love, not to hate. It means embarking on a mutual quest for tolerance and understanding. It means repairing our shattered world, together, as only a global community, united by common values, can.
Indeed, as the preamble to the United Nations Charter says:
“We the Peoples of the United Nations determined….to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small…”
Commemorating the Holocaust – paying respect to its victims, honoring the heroism of its survivors, saluting the liberating nations and their valiant soldiers, and focusing world attention on the horrors of genocide and denouncing those who deny that it can and did happen – stands at the core of what the United Nations means to us today.
It is our collective duty to ensure we remember and never allow that to be forgotten.
Thank You.
