Train of a Thousand - International Youth-meeting Auschwitz 2015 - Speech by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament

Dear Mr Alberto Israël,

Dear Mr Paul Sobol,

Dear President of the Auschwitz Foundation, Mr. Henri Goldberg,

Dear Management Director of the Institut des Vétérans, Mr. Michel Jaupart

Dear Secretary General of the International Federation of the Resistance Fighters,

Mr. Filippo Giuffrida,

Dear Participants of the Train of a Thousand,

Friends,

we have come together here in Auschwitz today, this place of darkness where unique acts of evil were committed.

During the greatest horror mankind has ever known, 1,1 million innocent people -men, women, children, babies - were murdered here in the hell of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In a ruthless killing machine, which stigmatized and denigrated, turned names into numbers and was hell-bent on annihilation.

Jews were murdered because they were Jews. One million only in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Five million elsewhere. In this crime against humanity that is the Shoah. And many others were murdered: Polish political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, gay people, disabled people, communists, social democrats, Christian resistors. All those who resisted were declared enemies and were persecuted.

The lives lost will be missed forever.

We have come together here in Auschwitz to bow low before the memory of all those who were murdered, all those who were forced to endure suffering for which no reparations can ever be made.

We bow our heads to the victims.

We have come together here in Auschwitz today to keep the memory alive.

Mr. Alberto Israël and Mr Paul Sobol, I am grateful that you are here with us today.

You, survived the terror of the camps,

You, who did not succumb to devastation, the devastation of the death camps and the devastation of dreadful memories.

You, who, after everything you had to endure, did not give up on humanity.

You, who found the strength to tell your story.

So that your memories will become our shared memory.

Remembering is painful. But we must teach every generation how these barbaric acts of evil could happen in one of the most modernized societies of that time. By a state which stigmatized, tortured and exterminated. The negation of civilisation that was the Shoah started with ordinary people.

How could human beings do such appalling things to other human beings?

How could human beings sink to such barbarity and depravity?

How could so many stand by, turn a blind eye, remain silent in the face of inhumanity?

We must tell our children about the vicious acts committed in a racist rage by Germans, about the guilt the generation of our fathers and grandfathers laid on themselves when they committed abysmal crimes that reached their horrific climax in Auschwitz-Birkenau. As German citizens it is our eternal duty to never forget, to remember and to stand up against the return of racism, anti-semitism and xenophobia.

We must keep the memory alive. We must do so for the sake of our children, we must tell them so that their children will tell the next generation. So that it will not happen again.

We have come together here in Auschwitz today to renew our pledge: Never again.

Friends,

it moves me deeply to see a thousand young people from all over Europe gathered here in Auschwitz today.

As a German, a politician and a father I am very grateful to you, that you have come from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Hungary, Estonia; from all over Europe.

In the midst of the barracks and the barbed wire, the guard towers, the train tracks and the selection ramp, the crematoria and the gas chambers, this place that has become a cemetery for all those left without a grave; into this barbaric place you have brought hope.

The hope that the memories of the survivors will become everlasting as they are passed on from one generation to the next and become our shared memory.

The hope that those, who to our shame have not learned the lessons of the past, will not prevail. To this day some deny the Holocaust ever happened. They try to convince us that the pain and loss inflicted on innocent victims, are illusions, are lies; adding insult to injury. We will never accept this.

You have brought hope into this dark place that those who in today's Europe insult, threaten and attack Jews because they are Jews will never hold sway. Because we pay tribute to those killed by hatred and vow to protect the living.

You have brought hope into this dark place that together we can and will fight the return of the old demons every step of the way. Anti-semitism and racism, intolerance and ultra-nationalism are raising their ugly heads again. It angers and pains me, that again in Europe shelters for asylum seekers are set ablaze and that populists are inciting hatred. But we will never allow the old demons to triumph again.

You have brought hope into this dark place that we will fight for freedom and justice, for democracy and human dignity. Today and every day.

From this place of darkness I appeal to all Europeans: Auschwitz, this nadir of civilization, warns us to make the respect of human dignity the guiding principle of our acts and our policies.

Today, the Mediterranean is the world's deadliest border. Every life lost is a stain on Europe. Yet, EU governments are not stepping up to the challenge, are not taking on their share of the responsibility. It's a shame.

Human decency demands that we hold out a saving hand to those drowning off our coasts; that Europe offers protection to those fleeing from war and persecution.

Friends,

we have to come together in Auschwitz on this 8th May, the day when 70 years ago the Second World War ended, when people from many nations, through great sacrifice, put an end to the terror of Nazi Germany, an end to this regime, which had brought death and destruction onto our continent. On this 8th May 70 years ago victims were liberated and people rid of the oppression.

Out of the rubble and the ruins that was Europe after the war, brave men and women set out to build a new Europe as they vowed "Never again".

A Europe of democracy and freedom, of justice and human rights.

A Europe where people can be who they are, love who they love, believe what they want and pray how they want.

You who have come together in Auschwitz from all over Europe to honour the dead, to keep the memory alive and to never allow the old demons to return; you will inherit this Europe. It will be upon you to fulfill the pledge to the survivors of "Never again" and realize their hope of building a better world. And as I look at you, you who have reversed the journey of death into a journey of hope, I am not anxious about the future.