Discurso del Presidente de la Federación de Comunidades judías de España, Jacobo Israel. English Version.

Ministers,
Authorities and dignitaries,
Ladies and Gentlemen

We gather here today for this State Commemoration to recall the horrors of the Holocaust. I would like to use the few minutes available to me to reflect on the reasons remembrance of the Shoah is necessary.

As a historian has noted, European society gradually closed ranks against the Jews over a period of fifteen centuries. First Europe told them ‘You can’t live amongst us as Jews’ and forced them to convert or go into exile. Then Europe told the Jews ‘You can’t live amongst us’ and expelled them, forcing them to seek refuge in the land of Islam. Lastly, Europe decided ‘You can’t live’ and triggered one of the greatest and most singular tragedies in human history: the Shoah.

Why is the Shoah so singular?

The process against the Jews began several years before the full tragedy occurred, in the shape of meticulously planned stages, many of them supported by the German Parliament -which was, lest we forget, elected democratically- with at best verbal condemnation from other countries, who sought to contain Hitlerism through partial accords.

The stages were very specific: the identification of Jews as ‘others’, the attribution of extremely negative traits to Jews, legal discrimination, segregation, persecution, dehumanisation and, finally, annihilation.

Just because they were Jews, that is, due to an inalienable component of identity, a circumstance of birth, not on account of their ideas or actions, arrests were ordered the length and breadth of Europe of peaceful women and men, unarmed, of all ages, from the young to the elderly, entire families. Some were murdered directly, while others were shipped off to lagers and extermination camps where they were slaughtered like cattle. They were considered non-human and were made to feel non-human.

Various gipsy communities and other ethnic minorities were also considered to be a burden on society. Thousands were rounded up and murdered.

Likewise, thousands of Spanish Republicans endured internment and hard labour in Mauthausen and other camps. Hundreds of Jews from Greece with Spanish nationality, acquired following the decree by Primo de Rivera in 1924, suffered similar oppression in Bergen Belsen.

6 million Jews died in the Holocaust. Largely for that reason, of the almost 11 million Jews who lived in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, a figure which fell to 9 million in 1939 as a result of pogroms, war and emigration, there are only about 2 million today.

The memory of the millions who were murdered demands our respect. Respect requires first and foremost that we share the grief at their deaths and at the conditions in which they took place.

Holocaust remembrance must extend also to all those who were imprisoned and died in the concentration camps because of their political views, because they fought Nazism or because they were considered a burden on society. In this way, we remember Europe’s tragedy, Jewish and non-Jewish.

Remembrance must serve to bring out of oblivion the survivors of the tragedy who made a new life for themselves. Their experience gives us hope also in demonstrating the strength of the human spirit.

Holocaust remembrance includes also a special memory of the righteous men who saved the lives of those persecuted by Nazi fanaticism, the witnesses who stood for humanitarianism in the face of dehumanisation and indifference. They included several Spanish diplomats. Let remembrance of them serve as a blessing.

There is more, however. After Auschwitz, after having suffered Evil with a capital ‘E’, we need to remember that nothing except Shoah remembrance and education can prevent a similar Horror from being repeated. Remembrance and education are necessary for Jews and non-Jews alike. A remembrance that looks back but which also looks to the future. Remembrance of victims, heroes and survivors, but also a history lesson for today and tomorrow.

In that regard, it is worrying to see how the Holocaust is trivialised -and even used as a weapon against Jews themselves- and how denialism is gaining ground in a part of the world. How, even in our own country, the decriminalisation of denialism, in the name of freedom of opinion, has marked a major step backwards.

One of the lessons learnt from Shoah remembrance, from that necessary memory, is that democracy and freedoms alone do not suffice to prevent a repetition of the horror. For the sake of real freedom, the freedom needed for peace and social justice to exist, parliaments, governments and civil society itself must not remain passive in the face of the discourse of hate. Holocaust denial, is always, always, a prelude to the discourse of anti-Semitic hate.

Thank you.