Josep Borrell

Ministers, authorities, ladies and gentlemen

Two years ago on this very today I was in Auschwitz with the heads of government of the EU member countries, commemorating the anniversary of the camp. We asked ourselves how this could have happened. How could it have been possible?

How could human beings civilised together believe that other human beings were underserving of human status and should be exterminated brutally and scientifically. How could it have been possible? How could it happen? Yet it did.

The wounds remain open throughout Europe. We went to Oshpitzim in southern Poland and toured the streets of what used to be its Jewish quarter. They remain virtually as they were when the quarter was emptied by force, deserted streets with empty houses. A ghost town to which nobody returned, either those who were taken away by force to their deaths or those who managed to stay alive, probably because they see it as a place of sacrifice which is difficult to live in again. Yet we in Europe have re-inhabited places of sacrifice; Europe itself has been built on the ashes of the concentration camps. Europe has been built also to make up for the ignominy present in our history.

The construction of the European Union has been grounded on the desire to ensure such events should never happen again. Thanks to that unity they have not occurred again. Nothing is easier than to blow on embers of hate, which were believed to have died out, for them to reignite. New examples are seen around us. It is as if we have not learned yet. It was not the last genocide to have been committed: not long ago, not far away in Bosnia Herzegovina, for instance, we witnessed massacres driven by the same criminal instinct and the same denial of others just because they were different ethnically and religiously. In Rwanda, hundreds of thousands of people were killed, after first being classified and given ethnic identity papers to make it easier to locate and exterminate them. Comparatively speaking, the genocide in Rwanda is as important as the Shoah. As is Darfur, more recently.

We cannot say that we do not know about them. TV cameras broadcast the pictures and yet we allow it. This Remembrance is not just a shedding of tears for the dead but also the living desire that nobody else should die in this world because they belong to a different group due to cultural, religious or historical reasons. I avoid using the word racial because, as we all know, human races do not exist, rather just the one single race that unites us. I think it is time we said that we will not settle our scores with history by causing to other children the harm inflicted on our own children. We will not build a future of peace for everyone by repeating past offences. Only by remembering the reasons (we can use the term reasons, can’t we?) or, at least, the causes that led to such barbarity will we manage to prevent them from occurring again. The first and most important task is to keep the memory alive. For that reason a major film exhibition was organised for today in the lobby of the European Parliament - I do not know if it was the violins that stopped playing or if the voices stopped also - so that young people and children could know what happened, as a first step to preventing it from happening again.

During my time as President of the European Parliament I had to call several MEPs to order and even initiate legal action against some of them because there are still people today, democratically elected in temples of democracy such as Strasbourg, who feel they can issue despicable threats against the Jewish people. Yes. Still today, here and now.

For these reasons, the eternal battle against the demons responsible for such evil must be fought using education, culture, teaching and knowledge, the only weapons we have. No doubt they will not be enough because the killers were cultured persons and after carrying out their killings at least they listened to Mozart.

However, the only strength we have is the strength of wisdom, which helps avoid those terrible consequences of hate. Which is why the presence here today of children is very welcome, not just to remember those who died but also to sow the seeds of a better future. Thank you.