REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF THE HOLOCAUST EDUCATIONAL TRUST, MANSION HOUSE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF THE HOLOCAUST EDUCATIONAL TRUST, MANSION HOUSE, WEDNESDAY, 21ST SEPTEMBER, 2005
Is breá liom bheith anseo i bhúr measc ag an ócáid speisialta seo, agus ba mhaith liom mo bhúiochas a chur in iul díbh as an chuireadh agus as fáilte fíorchaoin.
Shalom and thank you for extending to me the privilege of launching the Holocaust Educational Trust.
The holocaust has no equal in human history. Its roots in sectarianism and intolerance go back many centuries but its convulsive cruelty ensures that no matter what the admirable accomplishments of humankind in the twentieth century, they will always be measured and found very wanting when measured against the record of outrageous brutality. How many people must have wished that such a chapter would never have been written. But written it was, in the indelible blood of millions of violated souls.
Those who survived and who bear still the hated stamp of the killing factories grow visibly older and fewer each year. The Auschwitz survivors shivered in the freezing cold on the 60th Anniversary of their liberation and each one must have wondered, ‘What happens now?’. Will the world forget? Will tomorrow’s children remain ignorant of the story which, above all others, showcases the atrocious evil that lurks in the everyday human heart. Sometimes we call it racial hatred, anti-Semitism, bigotry, intolerance, sectarianism, but it has proved its power as the most potent weapon of mass destruction known to humanity. We simply cannot afford to forget, ever. As I am sure you all know, Simon Wiesenthal died yesterday and we mourn a Holocaust survivor, one heroic individual who did so much to make sure that the world would not forget. He was a great force for justice. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dhilís.
For future generations, the lesson of the Holocaust is probably the most important lesson they will ever learn. And they need to learn it well - to take it to heart, to become champions of tolerance, advocates of respect for difference, bulwarks against the voices which, even as we gather here today, are already poisoning young minds with contempt for “the other”. Changing the past is not possible but investing well in the present so that the future is not a trite repetition of the past, that we can do and that is what this Trust is all about.
As the years distance us more and more from the Shoah, as the voices of those who lived through it grow fewer, we need other ways to sustain the memory and to insist the world heeds the lessons.
And those lessons are many – they are the legacy left to us by those who suffered and died, a legacy of profound and inescapable responsibility. It is a universal legacy that falls on governments, on leaders, on teachers and parents, on all those whose imprint is carved on the minds of children. It is a personal legacy that falls on each one of us, for you can be sure that in virtually every corner of the world the toxin of irrational prejudice is doing its worst and the only proven antidote is our loud insistence on decency, equality, justice and tolerance.
Twenty-first century Ireland has its own experience of that toxin, from the long history of sectarian conflict to the treatment of travellers and more recently of emigrants to our shores. Our aspiration as a nation is to be a truly inclusive society, comfortable with differences of faith, culture, ethnicity and colour. Our own experience as a colonised and an emigrating people has given us enough experience of exclusion and discrimination to be wary of labels and stereotypes and to be sensitive to those who are victims of them. Our Constitution, the Good Friday Agreement, our National Strategy Against Racism reveal the heart we have and the wide support in our country for the creation of a society of respected equals where open-mindedness and joyful curiosity about the “otherness” of others are the traits we encourage in our children. The Holocaust Educational Trust will complement that effort well, creating widespread opportunities for the kind of intercultural exchange from which comes insight and wisdom.
The Holocaust Educational Trust will ensure that the lesson of the Holocaust, bought at such appalling cost, will continue to be learned and relearned until we get it right, individually and collectively.
I congratulate all the founding members of the Trust and thank them for this crucial investment in our future as a civic society. I wish you well on the journey ahead. The evidence, regrettably, is all around that you have started not a moment too soon for our world. I hope with the help of your efforts Ireland will quickly evolve into a loving, caring, inclusive society which honours the memory of those who died in the Holocaust and all those whose lives have been and still are tormented by hatred.
Is iontach an obair atá ar siúl agaibh agus guím gach rath air san am atá le teacht. Go raibh maith agaibh.