From the Keynote Address by Professor Irwin Cotler at the January 29, 2007 Holocaust commemoration of the European Headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva [exerpts only, with my emphasis added; follow the link for the full address]....
... there are things in Jewish history that are too terrible to be believed, but not too terrible to have happened.... Words may ease the pain, but they may also dwarf the tragedy. ....
...we have to ask ourselves, what have we learned and what must we do?
Lesson 1 ...the importance of Zachor, of remembrance itself. For as we remember the six million Jewish victims of the Shoah — defamed, demonized and dehumanized, as prologue or justification for genocide — we have to understand that the mass murder of six million Jews and millions of non-Jews is not a matter of abstract statistics.
For unto each person there is a name — unto each person, there is an identity. Each person is a universe. As our sages tell us: "whoever saves a single life, it is as if he or she has saved an entire universe." Just as whoever has killed a single person, it is as if they have killed an entire universe. And so the abiding imperative — that we are each, wherever we are, the guarantors of each other's destiny.
Lesson 2 ... The Responsibility to Prevent
The enduring lesson of the Holocaust is that the genocide of European Jewry succeeded not only because of the industry of death and the technology of terror, but because of the state-sanctioned ideology of hate. This teaching of contempt, this demonizing of the other, this is where it all began. As the Canadian courts affirmed in upholding the constitutionality of anti-hate legislation, "the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers — it began with words". ....
...Conclusion
May I close with a word to the survivors of the Holocaust — for you are the true heroes of humanity. You witnessed and endured the worst of inhumanity, but somehow you found in the depths of your own humanity the courage to go on, to rebuild your lives ...because of you ... we remember that each person has a name and an identity — that each person is a universe — that in saving one life we save an entire universe.
... we pledge ... that never again will we be indifferent to incitement and hate; that never again will we be silent in the face of evil; that never again will we indulge racism and anti-semitism; that never again will we ignore the plight of the vulnerable; that never again will we be indifferent in the face of mass atrocity and impunity.....
...May this day be not only an act of remembrance, which it is, but let it be a remembrance to act, which it must be.
Professor Cotler is a Canadian member of parliament and former justice minister and attorney general. A longtime board member of UN Watch, Professor Cotler is a distinguished academic and a prominent human rights lawyer, whose dedication to humanitarian causes has earned him the Order of Canada and many other awards. Professor Cotler has represented Andrei Sakharov and Anatoly Sharansky in the Soviet Union, Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Nigerian playwright and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, and most recently Saad Edin Ibrahim, an Egyptian sociologist and democracy advocate whose criticism of Egypt's Mubarak government resulted in his incarceration. Maclean's magazine has referred to Cotler as "Counsel for the Oppressed." He has been a leader in the development of international humanitarian law and has to his credit landmark cases in free speech, freedom of religion, women's rights, minority rights and peace law.
No comments:
Post a Comment