International Day of Commemoration
in memory of the victims of the Holocaust

Ambassador Leshno Yaar [of Israel]
Mr. Klieger
Excellencies
Ladies and Gentlemen:

The cruel and methodical murder of millions of Jews and many other groups – considered to be inferior simply because of who they were – can never lose its horror with the passage of time. The Holocaust is a powerful and indisputable reminder of the need to confront intolerance, injustice, indignity and indifference – wherever and in whatever form. The ideologies, policies and all those who contributed to their implementation were condemned by mankind at the Nuremberg trials.

The denial of the historical fact of the Holocaust and the glorification of anybody who contributed to this systematic murder represent a first step on the path towards the very inhumanity that nurtured this barbarism. We owe it to the millions of women, men and children who perished never to allow that first step to be taken again.

We are grateful to have with us Mr. Noah Klieger whose tale of survival has moved and inspired people across the world. It shows us both the limitless capacity for calculated brutality that can be unleashed within human beings – and the ability of our humanity to defy tyranny and overcome tragedy. Today, we are also reminded of and humbled by the conscience and courage of those who stood up and whose voices could not be silenced in the face of such evil.

The deeply personal experience of each survival holds universal and eternal lessons for us all. As the number of survivors grows smaller, our collective resolve never to preserve these memories must grow stronger. For those of us born right after the war, our view of the world and our sense of history were shaped by the proximity to this calamity. By transmitting the stories of the Holocaust, we ensure that generations born decades later are also instilled with a moral compass to make them vigilant in the face of discrimination and human rights abuse and the revival of the ideologies and policies that gave rise to the Holocaust.

Our world may have been transformed in many ways, but the basic forces – the hate and fear of all that is different – can still thrive now 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz. Atrocities and crimes against humanity after World War II sadly tell us that the cry of “Never Again” has too often remained an aspiration rather than a call to action.

The legacy of the survival is the legacy of the human family. It is our shared and solemn responsibility to ensure that the strength of the human spirit survives as the only enduring legacy of Holocaust. Today, let us recommit ourselves to that cause to honour the victims. Let our lasting memorial to them be a world in which respect for the dignity and the rights of each human being triumphs.

Thank you very much.