“Teaching Remembrance: Cultural Heritage - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” 3rd Seminar of European Ministers of Education - Prague and Terezin, Czech Republic, 24-25 April 2006 

Speech of the former President of the Czech Republic, Prof. Václav Havel

Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all, let me greet you and express my delight that you are meeting here in Prague. Your eyes are focused the topic of the holocaust. I would like to take liberty and make a few comments about this topic.

Firstly, I think that rather than a danger of apology for Nazism and its resuscitation we should be worried by the danger of crypto-fascism. Crypto-fascism is e.g. when distinguishing between better and worse concentration camps, suggesting that some concentration camps were not really concentration camps. This crypto-fascism could be also identified by a certain reticent attitude towards minorities, by a certain cult of ethnicity.

The onset of all this may be shaped to quite innocent contours. Similarly, this could be also traced in the attitude towards people of different sexual orientation, in the attitude to ethnic nation transfers, in a special cult of purity, hygiene, sport, which are certainly good things, but if they are displaced just a few millimetres, they may trigger something very dangerous. It is enough to recall the Nazi theory of “pure race” reproduction. That has been one of my comments.

We should be vigilant not only against those young people, who, often out of ignorance, wear Nazi symbols. We should be even more vigilant against these inconspicuous signs of a form of crypto-fascism which does not declare its support to the Nazi era and which naturally deplores this whole era.

Let me make another comment. I would like to refer to the tradition of modern thinking, starting with Hannah Arendt to Zygmunt Bauman, which underlines the fact that the holocaust, or rather the holocausts, are not problems of individual nations but of the whole mankind, of modern civilisation; that it is the shame of this civilisation and that it is not possible to delegate and require only one nation to concern itself with the memory of the thwarted lives, and to try to exculpate the others. It is a problem shared by all of us, a problem closely connected with the character of the contemporary civilisation itself.

The civilisation which is based on rational reasoning, on calculation, it is the world of purpose, of evident traceable profits. This world of modern science seems to be suffering from a kind of weakened conscience, since conscience is somewhat less rational and less definable in terms of modern science, as if morality and conscience are things which have been put aside into a bathroom as something very intimate and psychological. A rigorous universal ethical order has been losing its value, the order which is coming from the outside and which is understood by all.

In this situation, be it he holocaust of the Jews or the Armenians, or the Gulag Archipelago, all these disasters are a kind of monstrous, although in a certain way comprehensible, products of the double meaning character of modern civilisation and the techno-science which, on the one hand, bring fantastic and fascinating inventions, but which, on the other hand, offer stand-offish attitude towards ethical order as if they cannot pigeon-hole it.

The reason why I have mentioned this is that you, being ministers and deputy ministers responsible for education, doubtlessly have to deal with the topic of education. And I am posing myself a question concerning how the issue I have been talking about is reflected in the education of young generations.

All political parties in Europe speak as one in their individual voices about the necessity of education about the education society. In our country we can witness how they vie with one another in this respect in this pre-election period. All universities and scientific institutions in Europe fight for more money from the state budget; all political parties promise they would give them more. Why is it necessary to support education? Arguments gathered are often unfounded, false, and exactly fit this tradition of purpose-built, rational, pragmatic civilisation.

One of the arguments says that science, research and education can be projected into practice and through a particular invention can assist the economy and industry. Obviously, there is no doubt about this. Nevertheless, this is not the main concern.

Another argument for the support of education society says that it is a way of cultivating humanness. There is no human identity without the knowledge of history, without a kind of continuity, without the knowledge of matters of this world. This eventually leads to the education for citizenship, to a more meaningful behaviour in a society. Nevertheless, not even this is my main concern.

What seems to be yet more important for me is that education responses to one of the basic human needs, i.e. the need for cognition. We humbly face the secrets of this world, this universe, our being, and we seek, as much as our abilities allow, to find the reasons, the justification for all this. Therefore, we keep researching regardless of whether a factory is or is not going to avail itself of the results of our research. I am referring to so called basic research.

I would like to conclude with a comment which is again related to the topic of the character of contemporary civilisation. Obviously, subjects like ethics, morality etc. can be included in different curricula. And, of course, it is very important. What, however, seems to be even more important is that professoriate, teachers, those who help to shape young people, i.e. all those who, by the way they live and act and the way they teach, emanate a sort of human modesty, wisdom, awareness of the broader context, ability to go beyond the horizons of the disciplines taught and their methodologies, ability to lead by example and through their personal charisma to generate a radiation field in which new generation of intellectuals are shaped, generations capable of understanding the broader context.

These have been just a few unpretentious comments I wanted to make on this topic. To conclude I would like to wish success to your discussion. Thank you.