Seminar of European Ministers of Education "Teaching remembrance through cultural heritage". Cracow and Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland. 4 ‑ 6 May 2005

 

Closing address by Gabriele Mazza, Director of  school, out-of-school and higher education, Council of Europe

 

This seminar has anew brought home to us the full extent of the tragedy of the extermination, causing us to feel incomprehension, horror and an absolute determination to do everything in our power - absolutely everything - so that the world never again has to live with such grief and such remorse.

 

The emotion that seizes us during the March of the Living naturally cannot compare with the unspeakable, utter exhaustion, despair and suffering of those who dragged themselves along the same route sixty years ago. No matter how sensitive we may be, how deep our empathy, the degree to which some of our families were affected, no matter what we have read, how forceful the rare, haunting newsreels we have seen again and again on the cinema and television screens, we ourselves can never re-live the horror experienced by the men and women who took this route, every morning and every evening, subjected to the blows and the screaming of the SS and the kapos, asking themselves whether this might not be their last journey and seeing those close to them die day by day. Death, which for us is so distant and so exceptional, was part of their everyday lives. The only colours left in their world were grey and black.  Imagining the nightmare they lived is as impossible as attempting to portray it, but catching just a fleeting glimpse of it is an act of duty and devotion, devotion and pity.

 

This quick glimpse which leaves us speechless, this glance into hell, would be pointless if it was our ultimate goal. This experience does more than call on us, or indeed command us, to understand, testify and take action. Without emotion, reasoning is but dry facts and figures and, although homage must be paid to the extraordinary work done by people like Hilberg who, with astounding meticulousness, drew up the informative, inconceivable reckoning of the mass murders, it must constantly be borne in mind that each number corresponded to a man, woman or child, a living person with hopes, plans, achievements, feelings and loved ones.  That is why this event could not simply take the form of an intellectual debate or a gathering of the highest public officials.

 

Conversely, raw emotion without the reasoning that prompts us to question and learn from the past would leave us exhausted and unprepared, defenceless in the face of current and future threats, potential victims hypnotised by the evil that still prowls around us, feeding on our inability to curtail it.

 

It is for this reason that, together with the Polish chairmanship, we wanted closely to combine these two approaches, to place emotion and reason on an equal footing in this event, which we have sought to devote entirely to the need for endless repetition of the lessons of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis.

 

Voices are sometimes raised here and there to ask whether we are not overdoing things. I am of course not referring to the negationists or revisionists, always on the lookout for opportunities to serve up their spurious arguments and lies. I am thinking of those who, aware that as the new century progresses the old is becoming obsolete, fear that the wearing effect of repetition will in the end harm the cause it is intended to serve. The French philosopher Auguste Comte has already answered them: it is when the living forget that the dead die.  What is more, that forgetfulness represents a mortal danger for future generations, since it condemns humankind to relive the darkest events of its past at various times in the more or less distant future

 

However, repeating the lesson does not mean teaching it in exactly the same way. If the commemorations, learned works and monuments were but a meaningless, empty ritual, the remembrance movement's detractors would be right. Here as elsewhere, remembrance must be a productive force, spreading through time and all over the world the lessons of Auschwitz, which has become a symbol of horror and evil, the "anus mundi" to borrow the perfectly apt but atrocious expression coined by the poet Paul Celan.

 

Our presence at this seminar in Cracow and Auschwitz accordingly cannot be divorced from the educational goal which the Council of Europe has relentlessly pursued for years.  At the same time, the Polish authorities are to be commended for their determination to hold this event. It is not easy for a country to live with places whose mere name has become synonymous with cowardice and human baseness, even if at the time, again citing Paul Celan, "death was a master from Germany".  However, wounds heal only when they are treated and not simply covered up.  If Europe has a destiny, and we believe it does, it must accept the legacy not only of the positive aspects of its history but also of the negative side, the burden of care and responsibility for the blackest, most painful periods the continent has known.

 

Europe faces a dual challenge: unity, not unity achieved through armed force by dictators conveying an ideology of exclusion, but the unity of the peoples of Europe on the march towards a better world.  The voice of Pericles telling the Athenians: "May future centuries say of us that we built the most prosperous and happiest of cities" still echoes in Europe, and we should listen to it.  We are still pursuing the same goal, but we exclude no one and wish to make this dream come true for all. That is the posthumous victory we can give all those who were here reduced to ashes solely on account of their origins or because they resisted the imposition of a single way of thinking on all of humanity.

 

If we are to spread this message we need everyone's help, and teachers have a pioneering role in enlightening others. You who are responsible for education policy in your respective countries all have the duty of ensuring that this noble lesson is taught.

 

We are aiming for more than a simple teaching programme. We are striving to convince young people, to win them over to the idea that what happened here in the middle of the bloody 20th century is not simply the business of the Jews, the Roma, homosexuals, the Germans and the Poles. It is a matter for humankind in its struggle with evil. Together, we will not be too many to prevent a recurrence of such horror, not just in Europe but anywhere in the world. We must show that Europe, which once reached the depths of abjectness, can also climb towards the ethical heights.