It’s been seventy-five years since the liberation of Auschwitz Konzentrationslager.
We have among us today, over 200 people who experienced this hell -
an unimaginable hell.
Thank you so much.
What you've been saying in the camp and through these 75 years,
is “Never again.”
Not for yourselves, but for us, our children and grandchildren.
We built the post-war world on your experience.
So, we owe you something. We all do.
The world was meant to be different.
The United Nations was to be the guarantor of peace.
Crimes against humanity were to be prosecuted endlessly.
International cooperation and interdependence were intended to deter conflicts.
Ecumenism was supposed to bring people of faith together.
Today, however, from almost every corner of the world, we can see the revival of the old ghosts.
Acts and attitudes of antisemitism, racism and xenophobia are on the increase.
In the darkness, the resurgence of populism and demagogy
strengthen the ideologies of contempt and hatred.
And we are becoming increasingly indifferent.
Confined within ourselves. Apathetic. Passive.
We don't see and don't want to see.
We don't talk and don't want to talk.
The majority were silent when the Syrians drowned,
in silence, we turned our backs on the Congolese,
we almost didn't utter a word when Rohingya was murdered two years ago,
with silence today, we conceal the tragic fate of the Uyghurs
The silence after the Holocaust is inhuman
and will never be human again.
Besides the Holocaust, our silence today is our greatest disaster,
our self-dehumanization.
Yes, that's right: self-humanization.
The Righteous Among the Nations did not give likes,
they never wrote protest-songs, nor signed on-line petitions.
They performed endless good in dramatic conditions,
rescuing a particular individual.
But that's the only reason they saved their face and dignity.
How do we, with all our culture of memory, compare ourselves to them today?
Worse than forgetting, is such a memory,
that doesn't arouse a moral concern within us.
Only then, the "Never again" is lost.
Seventy-five years after Auschwitz
it is in fact in memory that we must search for sources
for our responsibility today.
Meanwhile, in our memories, we often only seek
short-term emotions,
without consequence,
without obligation.
Such a memory loses its significance.
How can one say “Never again”
while looking into the eyes of the Jews attacked on the street,
to the humiliated Roma,
people all over the world:
persecuted minorities,
refugees,
the starving,
murdered,
hundreds of thousands of people locked up in various camps?
Załmen Gradowski, who was murdered in Birkenau, was
right when he wrote, shortly before the Sonderkommando revolt:
“We have a terrible feeling because we know.”
We also know and feel.
What has become of our world?
Where and why did we squander our basic, fundamental values?
Where is our responsibility?
Each one of us!
So, when will Auschwitz become a reality that has been overcome and liberated?
In the very essence of the cry “Never again”
the liberation of Auschwitz also continues today!
Here and now, every day.