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$Unique_ID{bob01129}
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$Title{Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1945, The
Chapter I: The Opening}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Various}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{war
remember
world
another
first
holocaust
time
together
mankind
soviet}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Title:       Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1945, The
Author:      Various
Date:        1987

Chapter I: The Opening

Miles Lerman

     For the next two days, you, the liberators, and we, the survivors, will
share some of the most vivid, the most personal, and the most anguished
memories of the horrors that you discovered when you first entered the camps.
Tonight, as I stand before you, my mind flashes back to the dreadful years of
Nazi domination, for I am a survivor.

     During World War II, I fought as a partisan in the forests of southern
Poland.  On the day of my liberation, I returned to my hometown on the top of
a tank of the advancing Soviet and Polish armies.  I should have been jubilant
for Hitler's defeat was imminent, but I was not.  How could I be?  For of the
16,000 Jews who lived in my hometown before the Nazi onslaught, I found on my
return home 11 surviving Jews, wandering around aimlessly, hoping to find some
of their families alive.  Unfortunately, most of them perished in the gas
chambers of the death camp of Belzec.  Among them were my mother, my sister
and her husband, three of her young boys ages six, eight, and 13 plus 29 other
members of my immediate family.

     I know that I am speaking not as an individual because my sad experience
is not unique not unique at all.  Every survivor in this room could stand up
and describe to you his own personal sea of misery, degradation, and mass
murder.  Yet, as I address you here tonight, I must share with you my deep
sense of awe at having the honor of opening this historic reunion.

     Little did I dream in the dark days when my people were being annihilated
that some day I would stand in the assembly hall of' the State Department of
the United States of America, the symbol of freedom and hope, and fulfill the
most fervent wish of those who perished, a wish to be remembered, a wish that
we harken to their final plea that should any one of us survive, we were to
bear witness and tell the story of their agony and their torture and their
painful deaths.

     How could I have dreamt that their final wish would be fulfilled at an
assembly of I 4 nations, nations who occasionally are at odds with one
another, yet united here tonight in a historic commitment to memory and truth.
I know that the next two days will be for all of us full, demanding, and
rewarding days that will allow us to recognize your achievements, to pay
tribute to you for bringing freedom to all of us who were destined for death,
but above all, to ensure that this shameful chapter in the history of mankind
remains unaltered and undistorted forever and ever.

Alexander Haig

     I am very, very honored to have been asked to participate in this
evening's deliberations.  I am very pleased to see so many of my former
military colleagues, some of whom I have known in the past, and some of whom I
am proud to be associated with in a common profession of arms.

     Most important, it is with a very deep sense of humility that I address a
very few remarks to this International Liberators Conference.  The presence of
great scholars and spiritual leaders adds a special dignity to this occasion,
but we all share a unique honor.  We are privileged to stand tonight in the
same room with the survivors of the Holocaust and those who liberated then,.

     It is difficult to speak of the murder of the many mill ions whom we
remember here tonight.  Even Winston Churchill, who mobilized the English
language and sent it into battle, lost his power of definition when he
attempted to describe the Holocaust.  He said simply that it was "a crime
without a name." Yet it happened, and it happened in a century notable for the
advances of science and technology, advances that should have ennobled life,
not deprived so many of it.

     A philosopher once wrote that a modem man lives on familiar terms with
many contraries.  We are modern men, and we live with a terrible contrary.  We
have achieved unprecedented progress for mankind, yet we carry the memory of
an unprecedented crime against mankind.  Even as we strive for the best, we
know that man is capable of the worst.  What are we to do with this memory?
How can we bear it?  This is the underlying problem that the Holocaust Council
has set before this conference.  This is the fundamental issue that we, the
representatives of many nations gathered here, must confront.

     I believe that we can bear the memory of the Holocaust only if we strive
to prevent its recurrence.  Let us, therefore, remember well the signposts on
the road to genocide.  First, individual rights were revoked.  Then,
individual dignity was denied.  Finally, in the abyss of despair, came the
murder itself. It began with the most defenseless, but it did not stop with
them.  And genocide succeeded because the defenders of individual rights
allowed themselves to be divided because they sought refuge in illusion and in
weakness.  They failed to fight for their own principles. They betrayed not
only those who lost their lives but themselves as well.

     The victims and the survivors of the Holocaust have shown us, each in
their own ways, that man need not succumb to this evil.  Those who went to
their deaths singing of their belief in God did not lose their souls.  Those
who fought against hopeless odds did not lose their dignity.  Those who
survived did not despair.  I've seen for myself the stark testimony of the
victims at Yad Vashem, the monument to the Holocaust in Jerusalem.  I have
also seen in Israel and elsewhere that the Jewish people have not lost their
hope in God, in themselves, or in mankind.

     The liberators, too, bear witness.  You will tell us that the values we
cherish become meaningful only if we are prepared to work for them, to defend
them, and to fight for them.  A generation unwilling to bear the burden of its
own beliefs makes possible a Holocaust of its dreams.  I know this as a former
soldier, and we are all soldiers for our beliefs.

     Let us, therefore, remember the Holocaust, not only to record the rapidly
receding past, but also to prepare for the rapidly approaching future; not
only to mourn the destruction of millions, but to strive for the rights of
millions; not only to comfort ourselves with the memory that evil was once
destroyed, hut also to create a permanent structure of peace and of justice,
both among ourselves and among the nations.

     There is an old Jewish saying "The memory of the righteous shall be for
the blessing."  As we remember the righteous today, let us resolve to act in
such a way that we merit their blessing.

Elie Wiesel

     As Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, it is my
privilege to welcome you officially and thank you for having accepted our
invitation to join us as we undertake a unique pilgrimage into history and its
darkest convulsive nightmare.

     Thirty-six and thirty-seven years ago, we experienced together a moment
of destiny without parallel, never to be measured, never to be repeated, a
moment that stood on the other side of time, on the other side of existence.
When we first met at the threshold of a universe struck by malediction, we
spoke different languages.  We were strangers to one another.  We might as
well have descended from different planets, and yet a link was created between
us.  A bond was established.  We became not only comrades, not only brothers.
We became each other's witnesses.

     I remembers shall always remember the day I was liberated, and to think
that one of you has been my liberator, of course, only adds to the emotion
which, naturally, is mine today.

     April 11, 1945.  Buchenwald.  The terrifying silence terminated by abrupt
yelling.  The first American soldiers, their faces ashen.  Their eyes. I shall
never forget their eyes.  Your eyes.  You looked and looked.  You could not
move your gaze away from us.  It was as though you sought to alter reality
with your eyes.  They reflected astonishment, bewilderment, endless pain and
anger.  Yes, anger above all.  Rarely have I seen such anger, such rage
contained, mute, yet ready to burst with frustration, humiliation, utter
helplessness.

     Then, I remember, you broke down, you wept.  You wept and wept
uncontrollably, unashamedly.  You were our children then, for we - the 12-
year-old, the 16-year-old boys in Buchenwald and Theresienstadt and
Mauthausen knew so much more than you about life and death, man and his
endeavors, God and His silence.  You wept.  We could not.  We had no more
tears left.  We had nothing left.  In a way we were dead, and we knew it.

     What did we feel?  Only sadness, and also gratitude.  Ultimately, it was
gratitude that brought us back to normalcy and to society.  Do you remember,
friends?  You, the strong soldiers with weapons, with glory on your shoulders,
and triumph in your eyes.  In Ravensbruck, Lublin, Dachau, Stutthof,
Nordhausen, Majdanek, Belsen, and Auschwitz you were surrounded by sick and
wounded and hungry wretches, barely alive, pathetic in their futile attempts
to touch you, to smile at you, to reassure you, to console you, and most of
all to carry you in triumph on their frail shoulders.  You were heroes, our
idols.  Tell me, friends, have you ever felt such affection?  Have you ever
felt such admiration?  Have you ever elicited such love?

     One thing we did not do.  We did not try to explain.  Explanations were
neither needed nor possible.  Liberators and survivors looked at one another,
and what each of us experienced then we shall try to recapture together now at
this reunion, which to me represents a miracle in itself, and my good friends
do we need miracles these days.

     At this point, allow me to say a few words parenthetically about the
Council whose Chairman I am privileged to be.  Created by the President of the
United States and enacted into law by the unanimous vote of both the House of
Representatives and the Senate of the United States, our Council is
essentially nonpolitical.  It has not been used and shall not be used by any
administration for any other purpose than to make our citizens and people
everywhere aware of the unspeakable crimes perpetrated systematically and
officially against the Jewish people - my people - and humanity.  Our
activities are manifold in nature and in scope.

     The International Relations Committee, which coordinated this conference
so ably and brilliantly and efficiently, is but one of the committees
functioning within the Council.  Another committee is in charge of gathering
pertinent archives.  Another is preparing educational programs for elementary
and secondary schools and universities.  There is a committee to prepare the
annual Remembrance Day ceremonies; another to plan the museum; and yet another
is engaged in raising funds to finance all these activities.  What we all have
in common is an obsession not to betray the dead the dead we left behind and
who left us behind.  They were killed once. They must not be killed again
through forgetfulness.

     This conference has its own history Moscow 1979.  Members of a
presidential delegation met with certain high-ranking Red Army officers, and
one of them in particular meant much to us General Petrenko, who liberated
Auschwitz.  It was an extraordinary encounter.  We exchanged stories.  He told
us of the preparations to break through the German lines, and I told him of
the last day in camp, the last roll call, the last night, the last
consultations among inmates, friends, fathers, and sons.  What should one do?
Hide?  Stay in the hospital?  Enter the hospital?  Join the evacuation?  The
Red Army was so near, so near.  We heard the artillery barrage; we saw the
flames; we prayed.

     I told General Petrenko, "We prayed for you and your men, and no believer
ever prayed to his or her God with more fervor.  We were waiting for you as
the religious Jews were waiting for the Messiah."

     While General Petrenko and I were telling each other tales of courage and
despair for, as far as I am concerned, they did come late, too late for so
many of us, I suddenly had an idea of bringing together liberators from all
the Allied forces to listen to you, to see you, to be with you once more, to
thank you, and why not admit it? --to solicit your help once more.

     My friends, we witnessed recently, in the last couple of years in many
countries that you represent, a vicious phenomenon, which is so evil that it
bears notice.  There are groups all over the world that simply deny that it
had ever taken place.  They say we have not suffered and our parents didn't
die and the murderers didn't murder.  But where are the victims then?

     I thought that since our testimony is being disputed, perhaps your voice
will be heard.  After all, you were the first men to discover the abyss just
as we were its last inhabitants.  What we symbolized to one another then was
so special that it remained part of our very being to this very day.  Here you
are, friends, from so many nations, reunited with those who owe you their
lives, just as you owe them the flame that scorched your memories.

     On that memorable day, the day of our liberation, whether it took place
in 1944 or 1945, in Poland or in Germany or in Czechoslovakia, you incarnated
for us humanity's noblest yearning to be free and, even more, to bring freedom
to those who are not free.  For us, you represented hope, truth.

     Six million Jews have been annihilated, and millions of brave men and
women massacred by the Nazis and their collaborators.  But we are duty-bound
to remember always, that to confront the fascist criminal conquests, a unique
alliance of nations gigantic armies transcending geopolitical and ideological
borders was formed on five continents, and they went to war on behalf of
mankind.  The fact that millions of soldiers wearing different uniforms united
to fight together, be victorious together, and alas, sometimes die together
seemed to justify man's faith in his own humanity, in spite of the enemy and
its inhumanity.

     We thought of the killers and we were ready to give up on man, but then
we remembered those who resisted the killers on open battlefields, from
Stalingrad to France, to Normandy, everywhere.  We remembered those who
resisted them in the underground movements in France, Norway, Holland,
Denmark, and the USSR and we reconciled ourselves with the human condition. We
were naive enough to think that we who had witnessed for a while the
domination of evil would prevent it from surfacing again.

     On the very ruins of civilization, we aspired to erect new sanctuaries
for our children, that life would be sanctified and not denigrated, compassion
practiced and not ridiculed.  It would have been so easy then to allow
ourselves to slide into melancholy and resignation, but we chose differently.
We chose to become spokesmen for man's quest for generosity and his need and
capacity to turn his or her suffering into something productive, something
creative; and of this we are so proud.

     We are proud that so many of these Jewish young boys and girls, who could
have become nihilists, arrogant, demanding everything - and rightfully chose
to go to the land of our ancestors, to Israel, and to build there a new
society with ancient memories, a human society where everything is sacred.  We
had hoped then that out of so much torment and grief and mourning, a new
message would be handed down to future generations, a warning against the
inherent perils of discrimination, fanaticism, poverty, deprivations,
ignorance, oppression, humiliation, injustice, and war - the ultimate
injustice, the ultimate humiliation.  We were naive and perhaps we still are.

     We, friends, we are naive.  Together we express human suffering which has
no name and no end.  Let us invoke it to avoid other suffering. Together we
have the right and the duty to make an appeal to which no one can remain deaf,
an appeal against death, against the degradation of man, against violence, and
against forgetfulness.

     We have seen what no one will see.  We have seen the human condition
trampled underfoot.  We have seen what fanaticism can do cruelty,
imprisonment, slaughter on the scale of the state and of the planet.  We have
seen the metamorphosis of history, my friends, and it is incumbent upon us to
bear witness to it.

     When a people is sent to its death, all others are threatened.  It is all
humanity which is threatened.  The plans of Hitler to annihilate the Jews
could decimate the Slavs, and this already carried within it the germ of the
end of all mankind.  They killed the Jews, and it was mankind that was killed;
and you, liberators, who stopped this process.

     Be proud of it until the end of your days, and be thanked.  Accept our
thanks.  If we unite our memories as we did before, everything is possible.
The forgetfulness and indifference to complicity will be eliminated.

     I address myself to you as brothers, friends.  What unites us is
powerful, durable.  We make a community which is like no other, and it is
getting smaller every day.  Tell me, who will be the last messenger among us?
The judgment which we make on past and future events we cannot fail to bring
to bear.  Our dignity depends upon it.

     We are against prisons.  We are against dictatorships.  We are against
fear, nuclear confrontation, and any other kind.  We are living, vibrant proof
that it is possible for men to unite to affirm the right to live and to live
in peace.  I am perhaps naive, but I think with all my heart that if we speak
loudly enough, death will retreat.

     We looked deep into the abyss, and the abyss looked back at us. No one
comes close to the kingdom of night and goes away unchanged.  We told a tale,
or at least we tried.  We resisted all temptation to isolate ourselves and be
silent.  Instead, we chose to affirm our desperate faith in testimony.  We
forced ourselves to speak, however inadequately, however poorly.  We may have
used the wrong words, but then there are no words to describe the ineffable.
We spoke in spite of language, in spite of the limits that exist between what
we say and outsiders hear.  We spoke and we spoke, and yet there were
explosions in Paris, bombs in Antwerp, murderous attacks in Vienna.

     Is it conceivable that Nazism could dare come back into the open so soon
while we are still alive, while we are still here to denounce its poisonous
nature as illustrated in Treblinka, which is its outcome?  Again, we must
admit our naivete.  We thought we had vanquished what Brecht called "the
beast."  But no; it is still showing its claws.  Therefore, at best, what a
gathering such as this could do is to shame the beast into hiding.

     I am telling you, my friends, that if we succeed here - I hope and pray
that we shall - in rising above politics, above the usual recriminations
between great and small powers, above simplistic propaganda, and simply tell
the world what most liberators and liberated have seen, then something may
happen and the world may choose to pay more attention to what hangs as a
threat to its very future.  I hope and pray that the liberators and the
liberated succeed in putting aside what divides us because what divides us is,
ultimately, utterly superficial.

     If we dedicate ourselves, not only to the memory of those who have
suffered, but to the future of those who are suffering today, we shall be
serving notice on mankind that we shall never allow this earth to be made into
a prison again, into a camp again, into a ghetto again.  We shall never allow
war to be considered as a solution to any problem, for war is the problem.  If
we succeed, then our encounter will be recorded as yet another of our common
victories.

     I speak to you as a citizen of the United States and as a son of the
Jewish people, as a survivor.  I know that our memories will traumatize
history.  I know that our knowledge is so awesome that it is impossible to
receive it, but I also know that we must communicate it.  We must give a
meaning to our survival.

     Friends, liberators, and brother survivors, if we do not raise our voice
against hate, who will?  If we do not raise our voice against forgetfulness,
who will?  If we do not raise our voice against war, who will?  We speak with
the authority of men and women who have seen war.  We know what it is.  We
have seen all over Europe the burned villages, the devastated cities, the
deserted homes, and a million murdered children of my people.  We still see
the demented mothers whose children are being massacred before their eyes.  We
still follow the endless nocturnal processions to the flames rising up to the
seventh heaven, if not higher. If we shall not testify, who will?  That is why
we are hereto testify together, not to one another, but with one another and
for one another.

     Our tale is a tale of solitude and fear and anonymous death, but also of
bravery, compassion, generosity, and extraordinary solidarity. Together, you
the liberators and we the survivors represent a commitment to memory whose
intensity will remain; and in its name, I pledge to you, and you will pledge
to yourselves, that we shall continue to voice our concerns and our hopes, not
for our own sake, but for the sake of mankind, for its very survival may
depend on its ability and willingness to listen and to remember.

Michael Gray

     Having heard this evening so many words, feel it is good to be alive and
to be here with you.

     At the time all this was happening, I was a small boy at school, which I
think puts in perspective the time that has passed.  I remember the horror
that I felt, even as a small boy, when I read in the newspapers and was told
about what had happened and what was happening in Europe.

     I therefore feel extremely humble but privileged to be with you and to
represent Great Britain and indeed the British Army and those of my
predecessors who fought across Europe to help eradicate the horror and
liberate some of those of you who survived.

     I would like briefly to introduce one member of the British delegation to
you because I feel it is he who really should be leading this delegation.

     Professor [G.I.A.D.] Draper and his wife have come over from Great
Britain.  Apart from being an international lawyer and a barrister at law, he
was in the Irish Guards during the early part of the Second World War and was
then seconded to the Judge Advocate General's office in 1945. He was a
military prosecutor at the War Crimes Tribunal, and it was during this time
that he personally arrested the commandant of Auschwitz, although that camp
was liberated by the Russian Army.  He will be speaking to you on Wednesday
morning.

     I'm sure that the French delegation here and others of you will know Mr.
Robert Shepard, who is the President of the International Committee of
Mauthausen.  During World War II, he was a member of the SOE [Special
Operations Executive].  He was caught by the Gestapo and was himself interned
in that same camp Mauthausen, and then ended the war in Dachau.

     He and I worked together on a number of projects of this sort in France,
and he has become a close friend.  I mention this because it is quite by
chance that I happen to be in my present appointment in washington; and quite
by chance also that I am here.

     In 1978, he asked me if would help him and another colleague, a man named
Maurice Cordonnier, locate the officers of the Grenadier guards who liberated
the camp at Neuengamme in northern Germany.  Many months later, in June, and
after much research, we were able to locate and take a party of 10 of those
officers over to Caen in Normandy for memorial weekend, as some of you may
remember, organized by the International Committee.

     It was indeed for me a memorable few days.  I spoke again with Robert
this morning, and I share his view entirely that events such as our gathering
here this week are important in order to bring to the attention of a younger
generation the horrors of those dreadful years chose, even like myself, who
were at school, as I've already mentioned, during that part of the war.  It is
the responsibility of peoples of all nations never to permit the same to
happen again.

     I say all nations, too, because the prisoners who suffered the Holocaust
were not only as I read it of the Jewish faith, but of many other creeds
members of resistance movements, political prisoners, intelligence agents,
Gypsies, and many others from all nations across Europe and elsewhere.

     Inevitably, I also believe there are disagreements about the preciseness
of history in relating to the liberation of those of you who survived and the
horror of coming away from those many death camps.  Suffice it to say that I
believe that their liberation came about through what, at that time, was a
vital cooperation between Allies.  It is a tragic narrative of almost
unbelievable dimension which I know will unfold during the sessions which we
are about to partake in during these coming days.

     We from Britain are pleased to be with you to share and to remember,
albeit very painfully, the experience of those of you who were subjected to
such terrible fear, to the humiliation, the degradation, remorse.

     I believe it was truly man's inhumanity to man.

Pavel Danilovich Gudz

     Allow me on behalf of the Soviet Union to thank you for your
participation in this first historical conference and to bring to the members
of this conference greetings from the anti-Hitlerite coalition of all
countries which contributed to the cause of the great victory over fascist
Germany during World War II.

     Hitler's fascism, the most horrible incarnation of the forces of
darkness, caused innumerable sufferings and disaster to peoples.  Tens of
millions of people perished in action during World War II and in Hitler's
jails and concentration camps.

     The war left its terrible traces, its gaping, bleeding wounds over vast
territories of our land and in the hearts of millions of mothers, widows, and
orphans.  We honor the memory of victims who perished in fascist jails and
concentration camps.

     This conference is being held at a time when, in my homeland, my people
are celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the historic battle of Moscow.  In
October of 1941, the Red Army stopped fascist offensives and then inflicted a
major defeat upon the German army for the first time in World War II, thereby
dispelling the myth of its invincibility.

     The main forces of Hitler's Wehrmacht were broken during the battles of
Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk, in Byelorussia, and in the Ukraine.  The
Soviet armed forces not only defended freedom and independence of our own
Motherland, but brought liberation to other peoples and saved humanity from
the threat of fascist enslavement.

     Mr. Chairman, allow me to express our most sincere thanks for the kind
words which you spoke about Soviet soldiers and heroes who liberated these
camps.

     The decisive contribution of the Soviet people to the defeat of fascism
was properly acknowledged by peoples in the countries of the anti-Hitlerite
coalition, by many heads of states and governments in the West.

     An important contribution to the victory over the common enemy was made
by peoples and armies of nations which were members of the anti-Hitlerite
coalition, namely the United States of America, Great Britain, France, and
other countries.

     The Soviet people remember and highly appreciate the courage and the
valor of the soldiers of the Allied armed forces, the anti-fascist resistance
fighters, and the troops in the liberation forces, partisans who heroically
struggled against fascist invaders in occupied countries.

     This demonstrated the possibility of an effective political and military
cooperation of states with different social systems that is precisely what the
Soviet Union was striving for to prevent World War II.

     In I 945, mankind celebrated the great victory over German fascism and
Japanese militarism.  The peoples' trial in Nuremberg passed its weighty
sentence condemning Nazi military criminals who unleashed the Second World War
and who were guilty of mass deaths of millions of people.

     In the after-war years, the Soviet Union remains steadfastly faithful to
the ideals of the great antifascist struggle of peoples for their national
freedom, democracy and a stable peace, for the implementation of the appeal,
contained on the first lines of the UN Charter to spare generations to come
from the scourge of war.

     It is appropriate to emphasize here that in the very first document
issued by the government of the Soviet Russia The Decree of Peace written by
V.I. Lenin and adopted in October 1917 the young, at that time, Soviet state
branded war of aggression as the gravest crime against humanity.  The Soviet
Union has been and is consistently following the fundamental guidelines of
Lenin's peaceful foreign policy.  The safeguarding of peace has been and
remains the supreme aim of the foreign policy of the USSR.  This is the aim of
the Peace Program for the 1980's, adopted by the 26th Congress of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union.  It embraces measures for reducing both
nuclear missile weapons and conventional arms. It contains proposals for
settling existing and preventing new conflicts and crisis situations.  It is
permeated with a desire to strengthen peace and develop peaceful cooperation
between the countries of all continents.

     In our nuclear age, dialogue and negotiations are needed equally by all.
There is now no sensible method of solving disputed problems except
negotiations.  History taught a stern lesson.  The peoples paid too dear a
price for their failure to prevent war, to avert in time the threat which hung
over the world.  We must not allow any repetition of the tragedy. Everything
must and can be done to prevent another world war.  Peace belongs to all
mankind and in our time it is also the primary condition of our existence.
Only through joint efforts can and must peace be maintained and reliably
safeguarded.

     So may a stable peace and happy life of future generations become an
eternal living memorial to victims of fascism, to victims of recklessness and
adventurism in world policies.

Jean Laurain

     Please allow me to first thank the government and the Congress of the
United States for having created this Council and to congratulate the members
of this Holocaust Council for having had the idea of organizing this first
international conference of liberators of Nazi camps.

     Our common civilization about 40 years ago met a challenge, and if it did
not succumb, it was due to all of you here.  All of the countries that you
represent we thank for having safeguarded the values of our civilization.
This challenge to our common civilization was on behalf of the theory of the
"master race"; it was a desire to destroy, to destroy all of those who were
different because of their religion, their language, their ideas, their
opinions.  This eruption of a time of scorn and hatred first struck the German
citizens, Communist.  Socialist, and especially the Jews who had well served
the state to which they felt they belonged.  This spread throughout the
continent was followed by the concentration camps, first built for Germans by
Germans, which then received huge contingents of people from all over Europe,
including resistance members from all over. They came before the same hangman.

     The demoniacal aspects of the Holocaust of the Jews, however, took on
dimensions that no one has the right to forget.  It is healthy that this
meeting should have been organized because it gives us all, despite the time
which has gone by, a chance to remember, a chance to remind others who did not
know the hideous face of Nazism to know this period of shame and misery.  It
is good for us to get together, those of us who liberated the camps and
representatives of the survivors that were liberated at that time.

     I think that their surprise was the same:  the surprise of those who were
fighting had no idea of what they were going to find behind the gates of those
camps, and the surprise of the prisoners, who, no matter what their courage
was, having been taken into this infernal machine, how could they ever have
expected to be delivered.  This deliverance came, and it was brought by these
Allied armies that came together in a common struggle to free these people.


     It is true that we will never pay enough tribute to those who delivered
Europe, but we must always associate, in our memories, all of those who stood
up with empty hands from the North Cape to Greece against this, all of those
who opposed totalitarian ideology and spoke the healthy language of liberty
and fraternity, which, of course, took on European dimensions.  They fought on
the soil of France, but the French also fought with all of those who were
uprooted by war and for whom freedom had become the only homeland.

     I think that we must adhere to the ideal of justice and its vigor, its
strength, its ability to go against the forces of opposition and to finally
triumph.  It is important to recall this because we could yield to bitterness
before the incapacity of our countries and our peoples to have prevented this
Holocaust, this unprecedented massacre, which came in the implacable logic of
a system and of its structures.  We could yield to bitterness and cry with
remorse, but we have this immense hope, which was given to us by all of those
who, without uniforms, without a mandate, fought and fought so well.  To our
dead and our soldiers we have a duty toward them.  We have a duty to remember
what they went through, what they did, why they made the commitment they did,
why they suffered, why they sacrificed, and especially why they dared to hope.

     This hope, we must cultivate altogether as a very rare and precious
plant, a fragile flower.  We must reaffirm, not only in our speeches but also
in our acts, our faith in mankind and in his destiny, our faith in our ability
to overcome difficulties as well as to overcome temptations and also to see to
it that a new abyss does not reopen tomorrow.  We must avoid totalitarianism,
we have to say No to totalitarianism, No to racism, No to anti-Semitism, and
we have to say Yes to fraternity.  In doing so, we will be faithful to all of
those dead without graves, to all of those whose deaths should not have been
in vain.

     Beyond survival our duty is also to awaken vigilance.  This conference,
seems to me to be a conference of vigilance indeed.  We must do everything in
our power so that such a phenomenon does not reoccur, and thus we must
undertake an enormous educational enterprise, particularly vis-a-vis the young
people.  We have to undertake consciousness awakening; we have to become aware
of the ideological origin of the concentration camps, of fascism, of Nazism;
and we have to look to the dangers of a resurgence of this modern barbarity
where all scientific and technological means are placed at the service of
destruction of humanity.  Because, as the German playwright Bertholt Brecht
said, "the belly is still fertile and the beast can still come forth."

     We have to learn a new way of life; we have to find a way to live without
hate and with justice, where the respect for the human person, without
aggression, without violence, will reign; then this new spirit, where reason
prevails over instinct, and a world to which all men of good will must aspire,
will become possible.  The posthumous will of all the people in the
concentration camps calls us to this vocation of the liberation of man.

Notes

Special Operations Executive.  An agency established by the British in 1940 to
organize and carry out sabotage in Nazi-occupied Europe.  Many SOE operations
were conducted in collaboration with native resistance movements, as well as
with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (055).