4th Seminar of European Ministers of Education “Teaching remembrance: for a Europe of freedom and rule of law”. Nuremberg and Dachau, Germany, 5-7 November 2008

Closing speech by Mr Gabriele Mazza, Director of Education and Languages of the Council of Europe

7 November 2008

This last couple of days have once again given us an opportunity to go over all the big questions that trouble us today concerning past events which took place in the heart of our old continent of Europe and within the most cultivated of nations, in whose footsteps many others were ready to follow.

Listening to the speeches and eye-witness accounts, we have again been able to grasp the extraordinarily complex nature of the regime of exclusion and terror set up. A frightening lesson can clearly be seen in the relative ease with which this was possible. So many people were seduced by a policy that relied on the good old solutions of finding a scapegoat, of designating the enemy within, followed by the enemy without. It was a policy that involved enthralling rhetoric, fear of brute force, cowardly opportunism, some people's greed and others' dreams, soon to become a nightmare, the whole range of measures utilised to bring human beings to heel, with an ideological apparatus and a system of repression that went hand in hand.

How to resist? How to avoid being taken in? How to prevent a recurrence of the atrocities? How to stay vigilant? How to show courage?

These are the real questions we must raise. We are of course unanimous about promoting a Europe of freedom governed by the rule of law, a Europe now rid of all its demons. However, we must aim for more than just words, more than pious aspirations or facile statements of intent. We must all bravely, lucidly and honestly ask ourselves two fundamental questions: What would I have done at the time? And what am I doing today?

The Council of Europe has unceasingly used every possible means to ensure that this awareness and this vigilance become deep-rooted in our behaviour patterns. This is why we hold so many teacher training seminars concerning this black page of history, which can never completely be turned. Nazism and its insanities are as much a part of our history as other happier, more positive events.

Nor can there be any question for we modern-day Europeans of forgetting it or of yielding to the unhealthy obsession that sometimes seizes certain intellectuals whose revisionist tendencies gradually slide towards outright Holocaust denial. The order most frequently reiterated in the Bible, that common foundation of our moral values, is "do not forget". Yet, how can we prevent history from degenerating into hackneyed ideas? Or, worse, falling into oblivion or becoming a matter of indifference. In this 21st century of the throwaway society, when the news frenzy of the media ensures that yesterday's tragedies are quickly forgotten, how can this lesson from the past be preserved and retained?

I stress the word "lesson" - solely commemorating these traumatic events not only cannot suffice but is also dangerous since it cuts us off from the past as something that has been completely overcome and put behind us. Our aim at the Council of Europe is to ensure that these lessons are taught without respite in a way that is of present and future benefit. The scale of the terrible tragedy of the extermination of the Jews and the Gypsies must not become an emblematic yardstick whereby we judge events and, if they fail to measure up to it, cannot be filled with indignation. This is because the slightest disregard for human rights or human dignity is already pregnant with threats of future slaughter.

Vigilance now, vigilance for ever! Let us not forget that the vital educational effort is but a necessary supplement to the overriding imperative that we ensure we live up to our words and our pledges day after day.