Statement by President Sassoli at the ceremony in the
European Parliament marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation
of Auschwitz
The European Parliament today marked the 75th anniversary of the
liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and International Holocaust
Remembrance Day with a solemn ceremony at its plenary session in
Brussels.
Members of Parliament were joined by holocaust survivor and Italian
senator for life Liliana Segre.
During the ceremony European Parliament President David
Sassoli said:
“On this day in 1945, the gates of the abyss were opened on
European soil. In Auschwitz, the very essence of humanity was
brought into question by the desire of the Nazi regime to
exterminate the Jewish people and with it the Roma and Sinti
people, Slavic people, political opponents, and LGBTI
people.
“Auschwitz embodies the very denial of our civilization. A
civilization growing from Jewish and Christian origins, that met
the Islamic world, that drove the enlightenment, wrote peaceful
coexistence into law, which fought against barbarism and for the
defence of human dignity, which sought to build an idea of people
living together in our countries and cities. Our civilization’s
drive for ever greater freedom stopped at the threshold of
Auschwitz’s gates.
“Faced with this, today, full of emotion and gathered in
recollection, we bow before all the victims of the Holocaust. We
want to take on our duty to remember. We take on this duty
because we know that Europeans built Auschwitz, we must take
ownership of what happened and live up to our
responsibilities.
“Auschwitz and all the factories of death scattered throughout
the European area, represent a fundamental question to our
society, our civilization, our culture and imposes obligations on
us. Above all, it imposes an obligation to act whenever we see
violence and discrimination, whenever an anti-Semitic and racist
action occurs in our societies.
"Nazism and racism are not opinions but crimes. Whenever we read
in newspaper articles of acts of violence, attacks, or racist
insults, we must consider these attacks addressed at each of us.
They are attacks on Europe and on the values it represents, and
embody the two diseases of the modern nation that are spreading
across our continent – an almost sacred view of borders and a
search for a pure and univocal identity – be it religious, ethnic
or cultural – which inevitably leads to the creation of
enemies.
“On the contrary, Europe was built and should continue to be
built on our diversity, representing a plurality of voices, with
political, religious and cultural freedom. It is precisely for
this reason that we must be grateful to Judaism, which allowed us
to form that universalist spirit which is an integral part of our
world-view.
“This is why we turn to governments to be vigilant to all forms
of intolerance. The vandalism carried out in Jewish cemeteries,
the assaults on synagogues and places of worship, the threats to
which European Jewish families are subjected. To all the forms of
intolerance that minorities face across each one of our Member
States every day.
“These obligations are written clearly in our Treaties. We ask
the European Commission and the Council to do their utmost to
ensure that they are enforced. These principles must guide our
actions, to keep the memory of what happened in Auschwitz alive
and transmit it to future generations.
“We all express our gratitude to Senator Liliana Segre who is
here among us today to give us her testimony. Auschwitz is
unspeakable. However, I want to believe that the testimony of
those who have seen the unspeakable manages to move our hearts
and inspire our actions, so that this can never happen
again.”
