“Germany, rise from the shame of Versailles. Restore your pride.” At the same time, the regime sees that the people are gradually overwhelmed by the anaesthesia of indifference. They stop reacting to evil. And so the regime can afford to accelerate the process of evil.
From there, things gather pace: a ban on employing Jews, a ban on emigration. Then the evil spreads to the ghettos: to Riga; to Kaunas; to my ghetto, the Łódź ghetto — Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Most of those there are sent to Kulmhof — Chełmno by the river Ner — where they will be murdered in gas vans, and the rest are sent to Auschwitz, where they will be murdered with Zyklon B in modern gas chambers. And here we see the truth of what President Van der Bellen said: “Auschwitz didn’t suddenly fall from the sky.” Auschwitz crept up, tiptoed along with small steps, moved closer and closer, until the things that happened here began.
My daughter, my granddaughter, peers of my daughter, peers of my granddaughter — perhaps you do not know the name of Primo Levi. Primo Levi was one of the most well-known prisoners of this camp. He once used the phrase: “It happened, therefore it can happen again, it can happen everywhere. Around the world.”
I will share with you one personal memory. In 1965 I was in the United States of America on a scholarship during the fight for human rights, for civil rights, for rights for African Americans. I had the honour of taking part in the march from Selma to Montgomery with Martin Luther King. When my fellow marchers found that I had been in Auschwitz, they asked me, “Do you think that such a thing could only happen in Germany? Or could it happen elsewhere?” I told them: “It could happen to you, too. If civil rights are violated, if minority rights are not respected and are abolished. If the law is violated, as happened in Selma, then such things could happen.” What to do? “You must do what you can. If you can defend your constitution, defend your rights, defend your democratic order, defend the rights of minorities — then you can overcome this.”
Most of us as Europeans come from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Believers and non-believers alike accept the Ten Commandments as the canon of our civilisation. The closest friend of mine, Roman Kent, the president of the International Auschwitz Committee, who spoke here five years ago during the previous commemoration, could not be here today. He is recovering from a serous illness. He coined the Eleventh Commandment, which stems from the experience of the Shoah, the Holocaust, the terrible epoch of contempt. It runs thus: thou shalt not be indifferent.
And this is what I want to tell my daughter, what I want to tell my grandchildren. My daughter’s peers, my grandchildren’s peers, wherever they might live, in Poland, Israel, America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe. Yes, in Eastern Europe, this is very important. Thou shalt not be indifferent in the face of lies about history. Thou shalt not be indifferent when the past is distorted for today’s political needs. Thou shalt not be indifferent when any minority faces discrimination. Majority rule is the essence of democracy, but democracy also means that minority rights must be protected at the same time. Thou shalt not be indifferent when any authority violates the existing social contract. Be faithful to this commandment. To the Eleventh Commandment: thou shalt not be indifferent.
Because if you are indifferent, you will not even notice it when upon your own heads, and upon the heads of your descendants, some another Auschwitz falls from the sky.