Ladies and gentlemen, it is a real privilege and honour as well as a great responsibility, to introduce the 2021 commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. Thank you for intrusting this to me.
When I was asked to present this three-day series of events that over the past few years has become a tradition for the Alliance française de Delhi to do in collaboration with the United Nations Information Centre and the Embassy of Israel, I was not sure how to do it – I am not a qualified historian, my family was not involved on either side of the Second World War; but then I reminded myself that this is true of nearly everyone in the world and that these events belong to the common history of all of us, and not just to experts, politicians and those directly involved. So it is important that “normal” citizens like myself engage with this most difficult of subjects.
Last weekend, while reading the BBC website, I came across an article with the headline “Nazi Buchenwald Camp no Place for Sledging”. In this very short article, the journalist reported that some people have been using the hill where the camp once stood to slalom between the graves and that the authorities have had to formally warn the public that winter sports are forbidden at the Memorial and that this disrespect of the dead will be punishable by a fine.
I find this story disturbing because the people skiing, horse-riding or sledging are clearly not neo-Nazis or Holocaust deniers, it is obvious that they were not there for political reasons. They seem to be normal citizens who decided to find another place to entertain themselves, maybe because the ski resorts have closed due to the COVID 19 pandemic, without giving a thought to the significance of the site, or maybe for some without even knowing that a Memorial to the atrocities perpetrated at the infamous Buchenwald camp was there.
This story, or anecdote even, illustrates very well the importance of a Day like today, a day when we need to remember that the only way to prevent the Beast being unleashed is through Education – through keeping the memory of the destruction it causes alive.
Lies have always been spread for political gain, and history has always been co-opted and manipulated to serve political agendas. However, this tendency seems to be particularly acute these days, with the proliferation of fake news, and opposing interpretations of the past being used to polarise us further, and with conspiracy theories storming the mainstream.
There have always been conspiracy theories on the fringes of society, but today they have become part of the public debate. And while many crazy theories about reptilian orders, for example, are startling and possibly disruptive, those that deny the Holocaust are actively dangerous because it is used to legitimize other racist and hateful theories and belief systems.
On 27th January 1945, the Auschwitz Death camp was liberated by the Soviet Army. 2025 will mark the 80th anniversary, and the chances of there being living survivors of that dark point in human history are very low. We are losing the first-hand witnesses of the atrocities endured there, both the victims and the troops who liberated them. They, the survivors and the liberators, have been a defence against the keyboard apologists and deniers intent on rewriting the past to suit their debased agenda. As these witnesses pass into history themselves, the responsibility for upholding the truth falls to all of us.
When Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied forces who would later serve as president of the United States of America, visited the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945 after its liberation by the U.S. Army, he realized how difficult it would be for people to comprehend the reality of the Holocaust, he wrote the following. I am quoting from a letter he sent three days after his visit:
“The things I saw beggar description. … In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. … I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the near future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”
It is disheartening to acknowledge that Eisenhower’s pessimistic words are so prophetic.
Historians, teachers, the media, bear a huge responsibility, to tell the truth convincingly, but they are not the only ones. Society at large and each individual one of us bears that same responsibility.
Thank you.