Holocaust Remembrance Day falls on the anniversary of the heroic Warsaw Ghetto
upraising in 1943, when an armored brigade of Nazi SS herding its population to
death camps, paid a heavy price in blood for weeks at the hands of Jewish
fighters with Molotov cocktails. January 27, the commemoration day designated by
the United Nations General Assembly, is the anniversary of the liberation of
Auschwitz by Russian troops in1945. These two dates reflect an evolving
perception of the Holocaust in our newly inflamed post-September11 world, from a
uniquely Jewish, to a universal catastrophe.
As a survivor of Auschwitz,
today Honorary Ambassador and Special Envoy of UNESCO for Holocaust education, I
am commemorating that tragedy with the Jews of Turkey – a country that has
welcomed and protected them from the time of Spanish Inquisition to Hitler’s
“Final Solution.” My mission is not only to lament and honor the victims, but
also to alert world leaders and the public at large to the risk of new man-made
catastrophes that may destroy their world, as they once destroyed
mine.
For the ashes of the Holocaust speak to us about the present and
the future, as much as the past. In the 1930s, when rampant economic and
political upheavals unleashed insecurity and fear, popular folly recruited
diabolic “saviors.”
This is how democracies perished and the hunt for
scapegoats began. In the years following my liberation from Dachau by American
GIs, new genocides, ethnic cleansings and other mass atrocities have confirmed
that the unthinkable is again possible; with plagues of toxic gas, atomic
weapons and ballistic missiles in the hands of new despots and
fanatics.
Thus, when incendiary demagogues, with nuclear ambitions reopen
our wounds by calling the Holocaust a “myth,” we the last living survivors, have
a visceral obligation to testify that it was both a gruesome reality for us and
an existential warning for all mankind of horrors yet to come. But our words
must be followed by action, with concrete policies of remembrance and education
that can raise public awareness of how such slaughters erupt and how they can be
prevented. Today I can attest that this process has begun.
For last
year’s commemoration of the Holocaust I returned to Auschwitz-Birkenau at the
behest of “Project Aladdin,” launched by the Foundation for the Memory of the
Shoah and UNESCO in the context of its program for peace and human rights. Some
200 hundred Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders from all continents, including
heads of state, mayors of major capitals, chief rabbis, grand muftis and
cardinals also made the pilgrimage.
In that cursed and sacred place,
where I saw, in my adolescence, the proud ship of civilization go under, where
my entire family and all the children of my school were annihilated, I was asked
to bear witness.
Surrounded by the mind-boggling relics of gas chambers
and crematoria which once spewed fire and smoke, united by common pain and
shared moral values, our unlikely assembly managed, miraculously, to transcended
all racial, religious and political strife and pray together to the same
Abrahamic God.
In the wake of that rare moment of ecumenical and
multi-racial solidarity, a small group of us was invited to appear before the
Committee on Foreign Affairs of the US House of Representatives. In that more
worldly forum I reiterated my the warning that unless we dissipate the ignorance
and distortions regarding the Holocaust rife in many countries, espouse the core
universal values inherent in our great creeds – spiritual and secular – and
unite against anti-Semitism, xenophobia and terrorism, the forces of darkness
will return with a vengeance to doom our chances for a safer and better
future.
BUT MY principal focus was on the promising potential for
expanded dialogue, revealed by the encounters in Paris, Auschwitz and
Washington.
The Grand Mufti of Bosnia, Dr. Mustafa Ceric, who was
also with us, confirmed that potential with there words: “I came to see for
myself the evil humans can do to humans, and to say that those who deny the
Holocaust of Auschwitz or the genocide of Srebrenica, are committing genocides
themselves.” True, one swallow does not make a Spring, but all his
coreligionists, of every stripe and continent, were as profoundly moved by his
declaration and shocked by the palpable evidence of Nazi barbarism, as the rest
of us. It was also obvious that they were equally disturbed by the barbarians of
today who kill and maim innocents at random, including their own kin. This
raises a hope for more tolerable coexistence between vast, silent majorities of
people who don’t consider themselves “sworn enemies”. That “Project Aladdin” is
now making available, in cooperation with local institutions, Turkish, Arabic
and Iranian versions of Holocaust books like “The Diary of Anne Frank,” films
like “Shoah” and other links for people to people contacts, suggests that the
hope is real.
It also suggests that United Nations organizations,
especially UNESCO, entrusted with lofty, fundamental responsibilities, must not
be derailed from their legitimate, specialized tasks by political or diplomatic
skirmishes of an altogether different nature. All the more so in a deteriorating
international environment which is pushing us toward fateful crossroads: retreat
into a dark age of unmanageable global turmoil, or move forward with new leaps
of imagination, innovation and creativity that can revive the enthusiasm and
energies of younger generations.
Having experienced in the course of my
tortuous odyssey the lowest depths and a few summits of the human condition, I
have learned and written that there is a way free of hatred and violence to deal
with the intractable challenges of our time. That way calls for collective
efforts to liberate the inexhaustible resources of human intelligence, knowledge
and compassion that exist in ample measure among peoples of every region, race,
color and faith. Developed and made accessible through the precious channels of
education, science and culture, these resources can usher in a new era of
tolerance, prosperity and peace – before it is too late.
The writer, a
former ambassador, is an international lawyer in New York, London and Paris,
with doctorates from Harvard and the Sorbonne. His books, published in 20
languages, include Coexistence and Commerce and Of Blood and Hope.
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