Honoured holocaust survivors,
Ambassadors, members of the diplomatic community and my brothers and sisters of Pretoria’s Jewish community,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today, January 27th, is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination and concentration camp by the Red Army of the Soviet Union. This day is marked annually throughout the world, and recognized by the United Nations as International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. In Auschwitz-Birkenau alone, over one million Jews were murdered in gas chambers, with starvation, disease, by gunshots, and through backbreaking labor. The vast majority of the victims were unaware of their destination and of their fate, as they were transported to the camp in cattle-cars, arriving in a state of total collapse. Historian Yisrael Gutman wrote, "Never will there be people innocent of all sin as were those victims who stood on the threshold of the gas chambers."
So, like most, I began speaking of Auschwitz in terms of numbers of lives lost and the statistics of the killing machine built by the Nazis. But that misses much of the point.
Daniel Goldhagen wrote earlier this week in a fascinating article in the New York Times called “How Auschwitz Is Misunderstood” that the central lesson is not the availing of technology and bureaucracy efficiency to kill millions of Jews. We all know, we have learned lesson on this African continent, that neither is actually necessary for mass murder or genocide. Instead, Goldhagen argues meaningfully that the crucial elements are a decision by political leaders to commit genocide, the willing participation of a large population of perpetrators, the sympathy of an even broader civilian population — in the case of the Shoah, principally ordinary Germans, but also many other Europeans — and, above all, an ideology that motivates them all to believe that annihilating the targeted people is necessary and right.
In our time, once again, we are hearing growing voices of hate, of xenophobia, of anti-Semitism, of defending killing because people have different views, faiths or are simply different.
On 13 July last year I received the following tweet from a South African:
[quote] “Rabbi Warren Goldstein this is the time I wish [hashtag] #Hitler was alive and his gas chambers still in use. @ambassadorlenk pass the message to him” [unquote]
Happily, in South Africa, such statements remain the exception and not the rule. That said, anti-Semitism and education for tolerance remains a concern here and around the world. In 2007, the South African Department of Education implemented a new National Curriculum, which contains a strong human rights focus. The history-social science (HSS) and History curricula for Grades 9 and 11 include a study of the Holocaust. According to a new study by UNESCO, South Africa is one of only 57 countries that make a direct reference to “Holocaust” or “Shoah” in their education materials. South Africa deserves credit for ensuring that discussions about the Holocaust are part of young students’ educational experience. The South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation have wonderful centers in Cape Town and Durban and I look forward to the opening of the new Johannesburg Center later this year.
Ladies and gentlemen,
There are some who claim that it is time to move on. To leave the Holocaust in the past after 70 years. They are desperately mistaken. In Africa where just 20 years ago in Rwanda a genocide was attempted and today, in my region, in Syria where over 200,000 Syrians have been and continue to be killed, the lessons and failures of Europe during the Shoah have much meaning for our world in 2015. The implied obligation within the words “Never Again” still remains upon all of us.
Of course, there are so many universal and particular lessons to be learned and shared to keep the memory alive for future generations. For me and many Jews, one key lesson is that among the 193 countries in our world, there must be room for one, one small state no bigger than Kruger Park, that is a Jewish state. A place where Jews, like any other people are entitled to live in peace and security. A place where Jews who could no longer live in places like Libya or Iraq or Syria, or can choose to live with their brothers and sisters and emigrate from places in Eastern Europe or Eastern Africa. A place where European Jews, even today, can see as an option if they choose. Where over 19,300 Holocaust survivors are living and revered by the Israeli public as the heroes they are.
The State of Israel, 70 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, still faces delegitimization, regular violent attacks from seemingly all sides and even active calls by member states in the UN to destroy it. It is hard from this solemn occasion, among the people present in this room that such a reality could be possible. For some who look at that picture, it is amazing that Israel still seeks to live in peace and coexistence within our planet’s toughest neighborhood. But we do.
Goldhagen concluded his article by quoting Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and the man most responsible for putting Germany’s plans in action, proudly announce in a 1943 speech: “Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only insofar as we need them as slaves for our culture.”
Such was the Nazis’ moral and mental mutation, the most profound in the history of Europe, that Auschwitz was built upon, and that, better than any other place, it symbolizes. When leaders assembled at Auschwitz earlier today for the 70th anniversary commemoration or gather tomorrow in New York to mark the 10th anniversary of the UN commemorative resolution, or even those of us here in Pretoria tonight, I am sure that we will all remember and mourn the Jewish and non-Jewish victims. I truly hope that we also all realize that when we consider Auschwitz, we are directly gazing into the abyss that would have consumed Europe and our world.
Thank you very much.