Minister Yuli Edelstein Speech in Brussels for International Holocaust Remembrance Day 


January 27, 2011
IMRA
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=50823

Following is the speech delivered by Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs 
Minister Yuli Edelstein in Brussels, Tuesday evening, 25.1.11, at a special 
event marking the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
__________
In the spring of 1939 George the VI, King of England and Emperor of India, 
instructed his private secretary to write to British Foreign Secretary Lord 
Halifax, having learnt that a number of Jewish refugees from different 
countries were surreptitiously getting into Palestine.
The King was glad to learn that steps are being taken to prevent these 
people leaving their country of origin.
Halifax's office telegraphed Britain's ambassador in Berlin asking him to 
encourage the German government to check the unauthorized emigration of 
Jews.
Today the apologists for the King explain that he was not an anti-Semite. To 
prevent Jewish immigration to Palestine was an official government policy, 
they say. It was made with the British interest in mind - to pacify Arab 
Muslim resistance to the Zionist movement.
Indeed- this policy- as we know now, was a resounding success. Millions of 
Jews didn't escape their countries of origin, except with the smoke of the 
crematorium chimneys.
On behalf of the many millions of victims of the Holocaust- many of whom 
could be saved if allowed to leave Europe to Palestine or elsewhere- I would 
like to begin my address by asking one simple question –what have we 
learned?!
Who cares if those who have the power to prevent genocide, to save lives, 
don't do it because they are biased or racist, or just because they are 
indifferent and selfish- if in the end the result is all the same?!
A distinction without a difference IS NO DIFFERENCE.
The Holocaust did not begin with concentration camps. It began with a brick 
thrown through the window of a Jewish business, the desecration of a 
Synagogue, words of hate spewed on the street. Hitler was able to carry out 
his plans because too many good men decided to turn their heads, to look the 
other way, to distance themselves from the pain and suffering of their 
neighbors – and to rationalize away the barbarity of racial persecution that 
was unraveling right before their eyes, for the entire world to see.
Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel identifies one character trait as the root 
cause which allowed the Holocaust to occur: indifference. For only in a 
state of indifference are light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and 
punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil confused. Indifference 
allows you to look away from victims. It is, after all, awkward, 
troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair. For the 
person who is indifferent, his or her neighbors are of no consequence.
When the mayor of a prosperous Swedish Malme town informs his Jewish 
citizens that he can't protect them from the anti-Semitic violence and they 
should leave - to what purpose shall we put all those noble words at all 
those Holocaust memorials?
When the Protocols of Zion's Elders and Mein Kampf become bestsellers in 
Arab bookshops from Ramallah to London, and the Jewish institutions and 
houses of worship are targeted by the messengers of hate - do we explain 
this away by the grievances and rage and blame the victims?
To me, a child of Holocaust survivors, a prisoner of conscience in the 
Soviet GULAG, and to my Jewish brethren in Israel and beyond, the lessons of 
this horrible calamity are as clear today as they were 66 years ago on this 
day, when the gates of Auschwitz opened before the Red Army and the massacre 
ended.
Jews should be united, Jews should be independent, and Jews should be armed 
and ready to fight.
The State of Israel stands today as a guarantee that no kings, no ministers, 
no policies will doom the Jews again, that there always will be a gate that 
is open and a beacon that shines friendly.
That is what Never again means, ladies and gentlemen. It means lesson 
learned.
It's 2011 now, and we're living a nightmare in which a bigoted fanatic with 
a mentality of a gangster, having violently subdued his own people, 
relentlessly pursues the ultimate weapon, threatens genocide and violence 
and spreads the tentacles of conspiracy, war and murder wherever he can.
Watching the gruesome spectacle of the representatives of civilized world, 
desperate to avoid, postpone, delay the inevitable, trying to engage with 
a bloodthirsty barbarian, we have new doubts that the lessons of the last 
World War are not forgotten outside our borders.
But let no one here doubt our commitment – against those who openly promise 
today to finish what Hitler had started, with grim determination and iron 
resolve, we will defend our Jewish commonwealth to the final victory.
But what about the lesson to the world?
Not so long ago, the heart of Europe was convulsed again in the slaughter of 
innocents in Bosnia and Kosovo, and again, when the salvation came, it was 
too late for too many. In Africa, Middle East, Asia we've been conditioned 
to accept as a way of life not only genocide, but poverty, disease, 
starvation, corruption, dictatorship, terrorism and religious fanaticism 
which shame our common humanity.
And we allow this to go on – in the name of politics, interests or even 
misguided progressive ideology of multiculturalism and anti colonialism, 
when in fact it is really all about indifference.
Those, after all, are quarrels in a far-away countries between people of 
whom we know nothing.
But today's world is really too small for the sentiment of Munich. Those who 
won't bother to stop the faraway genocide will have to contend with waves of 
the desperate refugees, who fear nothing and have nothing to lose. Those who 
will not stop the spreading of religious bigotry and hatred, fuelled by oil 
money and the culture of oppression, will be forced to choose between 
humiliating needs of security and the morbid fear of suicide bomber.
So let this grave occasion, on which we remember the day when the massacre 
ended and the reckoning began, be the day when we commit ourselves to the 
world where indifference to the crime is as abhorrent as the crime itself.
Let us never again be passive and silent, cynical and calculating, when our 
own humanity cries out to us from the killing fields of Rwanda, from the 
streets of Iran, from the prisons of Burma.
Let us never accept that there's some policy goal which is more important 
than the saving of lives. Let us recognize that evil does exist in the 
world, and let us make it our common commitment to confront and defeat it 
wherever we'll find it.
Jews, it is often said, are the canary in the coal mine of civilization. 
Anytime, anywhere, if you let the poison of the anti-Semitism spread in the 
air, the inevitable explosion will soon come. In its decision to recognize 
the International Holocaust Memorial Day, the community of nations had 
recognized that the remembrance of the victims of the largest genocide in 
history is necessary so its lessons will be learned and applied globally. 
Let us all strive to make it so. Let us build a world that is safer! Freer! 
more just!
Let us really remember.