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Justice Minister Alan Shatter today spoke at the National Holocaust Memorial Day 2013 Commemoration, held at the Mansion House, Dublin.

The Minister said:

Today, we remember the six millions Jews who died in the Shoah and also other victims of the barbarity of the Third Reich: the Roma and Sinti communities, Slavs, gay men, disabled persons, Jehovah witnesses and dissidents.

We remember that erasing European Jewish civilisation from the face of the earth was a German war aim. Indeed, if Nazi Germany’s wartime objectives had been fulfilled we should never forget, in this State, that the thoroughness of the planned liquidation of European Jewry included the elimination of 4,500 members of the Irish Jewish community.

We remember that the Nazis murdered each day of the war, on average, 3,000 Jews. To achieve this average required and included the elimination of 10,000 Jews a day in Auschwitz – Birkenau, in the final months of its industrial killings. The Nazi’s death machine showed no mercy and was devoid of morality. The destruction ensured the elimination of never to be known future generations by the murder of over one million Jewish children.

The Minister spoke of the importance of awareness of the Holocaust...

The question I would like us all to reflect on is, ‘How do we ensure that new generations know of and understand the terrible past of the Shoah?’ Because for the sake of today’s and tomorrow’s world it is vital that the young understand the depth and scope of the catastrophe. It is vital that they do, so that the Shoah of the 20th Century is never again repeated.

The important moral challenge for the young is to become active witnesses to the testimony of the survivors.

The survivors bore witness by giving us their testimony. They realised that those they spoke to might not want to listen or that those who listened might not understand. Although some feared that telling the dreadful truth might be futile, they allowed their distressed memories to speak. Thus, they thwarted the Nazi conspiracy of silence and the silence of those who looked away and either pretended they didn’t know or didn’t want to know of the unprecedented barbarity of the organised industrial slaughter that befell the Jewish people. They also put their faith in the moral ability of the young to bear witness. Bearing witness to survivors’ testimonies denies the Nazis a victory.

A small number of survivors are living here in Ireland and we are very grateful to them for joining us this evening. Suzi Diamond, Jan Kaminski and Tomi Reichental, thank you for so generously sharing your experiences with schoolchildren here and with the wider community. Let us also remember Zoltan Zinn-Collis and his sister Edit, both survivors of Bergen-Belsen, who passed away just a month ago. 

The Minister continued...

We must never be indifferent. We must help to secure in the world the rule of law and the protection of human rights. We must always insist on the international order acting to stop genocide. And we must not silently observe the resurgence of anti-Semitic hate crime in Europe.

Martin Schultz, President of the European Parliament, reminds us the European Union was created on the basis that Auschwitz must never be repeated. The Shoah began not in the gas chambers but in words of hate. So we must stand up to those like the Hungarian Member of Parliament who recently demanded legislation for registering and identifying all Hungarian Jews. We must not forget that it is less than 70 years since 400,000 members of the Hungarian Jewish community were transported to the death camps and that, without the intervention of Raoul Wallenberg and others, 100,000 more could have died.

The Minister concluded...

The history of 20th Century Europe teaches us that indifference and complacency should never be the response to racism and anti-Semitism. A lesson of the Shoah is that those who engage in hate speech, who promote prejudice and anti-Semitism, should never be facilitated by the silence of good people.

Today, we remember those whom Hitler sought to consign to nameless oblivion. Today, we continue to bear witness to the horrors perpetrated by the Third Reich. And today we dedicate ourselves to doing everything necessary to ensure that the horror of the Shoah, the greatest industrial mass killing known to humanity, is not repeated in this 21st Century or at any future time.

On this solemn day, we once more commit ourselves to remembering from generation to generation – L’Dor V’Dor.