Vol. 141 No. 16
I understand that there is a vote in the Dáil and the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs will attend the House shortly.
Before we proceed, I welcome the Acting Rabbi to the Dublin community, Mr. Vivian Silverman, Mr. Gershon Kedar, from the Embassy of Israel, and an old friend, Professor Jim Dooge, former Cathaoirleach, Leader of the House and Minister for Foreign Affairs from the House. All three are very welcome.
I cede the floor to Senator Norris. The idea of these statements was his, so perhaps he might lead the debate.
Is that agreed? Agreed.
I thank Senator Manning for his characteristic courtesy. I had anticipated five minutes, and if there is time left over, perhaps I could share it with my colleague, Senator O'Toole.
I am most grateful that the Leader of the House, Senator Manning, has acted so promptly and appropriately on my suggestion last week that this House should commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Members of the Seanad frequently stand in tribute to the memory of relatives or former Members of the House. Many of those are unknown to the current membership or known only by reputation. Likewise, few if any of us can claim to have known personally any of the individuals who died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz, although some of us have had the privilege of meeting survivors of that terrible place. It is by extension of this feeling of solidarity that we claim the right here today to honour the victims of Nazi tyranny.
There is nothing new in the tragic record of human history about murder of torture for reasons of religious, political or personal hatred. What makes Auschwitz different is the clinical efficiency of its operation and the application of modern technology to the trade of torture and murder. In addition, the sheer scale of the Holocaust sets it apart.
Moreover, we as a people who are overwhelmingly although not totally Christian, at least by cultural descent, must acknowledge the part played, wittingly or unwittingly by the Christian tradition in the destruction of the Jews. Hitler was no historical accident. He and his henchmen were the inevitable byproduct of 19 centuries of anti-Semitic propaganda and practice by the Christian Churches. This was a point clearly and movingly acknowledged by that most sainly of men, the late Pope John XXIII.
Nor did Ireland at that time cover itself in glory. Acting on the advice of our diplomats in Berlin, reinforced by the anti-Semitic Prejudice dormant within our own culture, most of those few Jews who attempted to find sanctuary here found our otherwise hospitable doors closed firmly against them. It is ironic that the National Library, which is next door to this building, should benefit so wonderfully from the generosity of the late Paul Leon, a friend of James Joyce. The Leon collection of important literary material was extended a welcome which would not in the circumstances of the last war have included its benefactor. I was interested, however, to learn recently that the British wartime leader, Winston Churchill, had actually ordered the bombing of the railway terminal at Auschwitz but his orders were secretly frustrated by anonymous bureaucrats.
Few indeed in the international community held out the hand of humanity and friendship to the beleaguered Jews of Europe. Of those few one in particular deserves our gratitude. It is appropriate at this time that we should remember the name of Raoul Wallenberg, who, unarmed and defenceless, protected only by the force of his moral authority, snatched from the jaws of the Gestapo so many of the Jews of Hungary, only to be allowed by the Allies to disappear himself into the Soviet gulag at the end of the war where he may still linger to this day.
It is important that we recognise and honour the principal targets of Nazi oppression. This is particularly true in light of the disgraceful attitude of the Polish authorities who attempted to delete all specific reference to the fate of the Jews from the recent commemoration at Auschwitz. It is very noticeable that not alone do certain elements wish to dilute the signigficance of the Jewish tragedy in the Holocaust, but some people also wished to obliterate from the record the fact that other groups were also targeted. In particular, it is important that we remember the handicapped, the gypsies and the gay community.
I feel very personally a commitment to the memory of those many thousands of gay people mutilated, medically experimented upon and murdered by the Nazis with the silent connivance of civilised Europe. It is estimated that up to 500,000 gay people were destroyed as a specific arm of Nazi policy. It is convenient to forget that parallel with the racial hygiene laws under which the Jews were persecute, Himmler also established sexual hygiene laws under which gay people where targeted and exterminated. Gay people were the first into the concentration camps, the first medically experimented upon and the first murdered. They were lower even than the Jews in the camp hierarchy. Just as the badge of the Jews was the Star of David, the pink triangle was the emblem for gay men.
I wish to quote from the memoirs of Rudolph Hess, the commandant of Auschwitz:
Whenever they found an opportunity they would fall into one another's arms. Even when physically in a very bad way, they would continue to indulge in their vice. They were easy enough to pick out. Their soft and girlish affectations and fastidiousness, their sickly sweet manner of speech and their altogether too affectionate deportment towards their fellows distinguished them.
Because they could not or would not give up their vice, they knew that they would never be set free. The effect of this psychological burden, on men whose natures were for the most part delicate and sensitive, was to accelerate their physical collapse.
Should one of them lose his "friend" through sickness, or perhaps death, then the end could at once be foreseen. Many would commit suicide. To such natures, in such circumstances, the "friend" meant everything. There were many instances of "friends" committing suicide together.
I doubt if even the great satirist Jonathan Swift could have conceived a greater irony. That a mass murderer should reproach his victims with accusations of affection, love, gentleness, loyalty, devotion unto death is surely an unexpected and unintended tribute to the humanity of the homosexual victims of Nazi tyranny.
I recall 15 years ago, at an international conference in Torino, Italy, speaking with members of the German delegation and asking them about the gay survivors of the German camps and in particular whether legal action against the German Government had been contemplated. The reply was chilling. I was told that some indeed had survived but the response of the then German authority was not alone not to compensate the victims but to return them to prison to finish the sentences of the Nazi courts. Let us remember that the end of the Second World War was not, unfortunately, the end of all such prejudice.
It is frequently said that we must never let such things happen again. These are comforting sentiments but quite misleading. Such things continue to happen all over the world and our first duty to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust is to ensure that silence no longer conceals barbarity. It is simply not acceptable that commercial firms throughout Europe, but most particularly in Britain, France and Germany, continue to supply military hardware, landmines and the instruments of torture to tyrants and dictators all over the globe. These companies are our equivalent in the 1990s of I. G. Farben Krupps and the manufacturers of zyklon B gas. Why has Pol Pot not been arraigned before an international tribunal? Why is it that a large number of European countries, together with, most disgracefully, Australia and until recently the United States of America, have continued to collaborate in ways that float not just morality but international law, with the genocide committed by the Indonesian dictatorship upon the people of East Timor? Ireland, at least, has played some honourable role in this matter.
Let us not be satisfied today with ritual condemnation. Let us call for the establishment of a permanent international war crimes tribunal which will collect and evaluate evidence of crimes against humanity and before which criminals, such as those who have operated in Rwanda, Kampuchea, Indonesia and the former Yugoslavia, may be tried, convicted and sentenced. Only thus can we be said fully to have honoured the dead.
I very much appreciate Senator Norris sharing his time on this matter, which is of great importance to him. I wish to make four brief points. First, I was the organiser of Irish Solidarnose ten to 15 years ago and I supported Lech Walesa when he was being oppressed. I have never been so deeply ashamed as I was over the last three weeks when Lech Walesa attempted to ignore the 1.2 million Jews who were killed at Auschwitz. It was a shameful reflection on the support he received from the international community on many occasions over the past 30 years.
Second, I was surprised that I could not find any other Member of the Oireachtas or elected public representative at the commemoration of the Holocaust in Dublin last week. This saddened me considerably. However, more than 50 per cent of the 500 or 600 people who were there were at most 22 years old. It is encouraging that people of that age are aware of this tragedy and follow it through.
Third, as a person who has put forward and supported Irish neutrality in international and global affairs, I have yet to find a way in which we can explain to our children and grandchildren why we stood by——
Yes.
——when people such as Pol Pot murdered and slaughtered all around him. How can we, in terms of the Second World War, still put forward as some emblem of virtue and consistency the fact that we stood idly by — neutrally, as it were — when genocide was being perpetrated on the Jewish people and other groups, particularly travellers, gypsies and the homosexual community in Europe?
Finally, we should remember that this does not ever go away. We should remember the number of survivors who could not face being reminded of these camps over the past two months; the people who are still suffering, the suicides of people who are trying to come to terms with what happened 50 years ago; the suicide in 1988 of Primo Levi, an intellectual and a writer, who more than any other, brought the camps vividly to our knowledge. All these things should make us aware that this continues.
I have never been to Auschwitz, although I visited a number of the other camps, Buchenwald in particular. A survivor of Buchenwald addressed the Dublin commemoration last week. It is very hard to describe or articulate the feelings generated by walking though those camps. It is a chilling experience for anybody who has been there. The fact that there is a kind of neo-fascism developing in Europe at the moment is worrying and should be of concern to all of us who look at European affairs. It is something which we need to watch and monitor at all times.
I welcome the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs to the House and I now have the pleasure of calling him to speak.
Thank you, a Chathaoirligh, for your invitation and welcome. I am very glad to participate in these statements.
Last 27th of January marked the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp known with infamy throughout the world as Auschwitz. On that date in 1945 Russian troops entered the gate, mockingly decorated, as were all the entrance gates of concentration camps, with the motto Arbeit Macht Frei—“Work Makes Free.”
The grim scene that confronted them on that January morning and which has haunted all civilised peoples ever since, was of barely recognisable human beings, sick, starving and traumatised beyond endurance. The 7,000 or so inmates of Auschwitz who greeted their liberators that morning in January were the few who had survived man's greatest inhumanity to his fellow man.
Never before or since in human history have the leaders of an advanced country set out to exterminate a section of their own citizens and those of other countries on such a vast industrial scale. Even today it is still difficult to come to terms with the enormity of this crime. The vast number of victims gives some measure of the almost unspeakable horror involved but figures alone can never convey a full understanding of the pain and suffering of those who died.
Auschwitz is the site of the largest cemetery in human history. Of all the Nazi death camps, it was the most elaborate and notorious centre in their deranged scheme to exterminate European Jewry. It was set-up in a remote region of Poland with the express purpose of killing people. This it proceeded to do on an industrial scale with a frightening efficiency. The gas chambers at Auschwitz and its associated camp at Birkenau were capable of gassing to death 60,000 people a day. The five crematoria could render to ashes the bodies of 10,000 men, women and children on a daily basis.
An estimated 1.5 million of the Holocaust's six million victims were murdered at Auschwitz. Of those, 1.1 million were Jewish; the rest were from all parts of Nazi occupied Europe — including Poland, of course, Russia, France, Netherlands, Austria, Central and Eastern Europe murdered for their nationality, their race, their opposition to Nazism, their culture — gypsies, communists, priests and religious and homosexuals.
Those not immediately consigned to the gas chambers were subjected to a regime of extreme privation, humiliation and contempt for human dignity. Perhaps most harrowing of all is the thought of the many thousands of Jewish children being done to death so cruelly. Those whom every human society must cherish and nurture most of all were not to be spared from the Holocaust. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel gave anguished expression to this sentiment at the recent anniversary commemorations at Auschwitz when he said, "God of forgiveness, do not forgive these murderers of Jewish children here".
The fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is first and foremost an occasion to remember and to pay dignified homage to the victims. It should also serve as a chilling reminder and warning of the need to address with unremitting vigour the sources of ethnic tension and hatred in the world. Since the Second World War, considerable effort has been invested by the international community in the development of international standards on the protection of human rights and mechanisms for conflict prevention and resolution. While some progress has been achieved, the recent resurgence of racial and ethnic conflict in Europe and elsewhere is a stark reminder of the magnitude of the task that still confronts us. We have witnessed with horror in the past few years the so-called "ethnic cleansing" of parts of former Yugoslavia and the tribal massacres of Rwanda.
We must be vigilant and we all have to take on the responsibility, as Senator O'Toole said, in relation to the continuing threats of ethnic cleansing and genocide which are sadly still prevalent in the world in which we live. A renewed determination to do all in our power to prevent a recurrence of such horrors is the very least that we owe to the memory of the victims of Auschwitz and the other death camps.
Today in a small and very humble way in this House we try to remember the horror of Auschwitz and the greater horror of which it was a part. A number of things come to mind. Perhaps the first is the human memory of what happened, of the individuals, the families, the ordinary people, the indescribable horrors to which they were subject. When talking before I came in here this morning to former Senator Jim Dooge, I was very moved by his descriptions of his visit to Auschwitz. What touched him most deeply was not the efficiency and the scale of Auschwitz, but the small things, the suitcases, the clothes of the children. All this was done with systematic callousness and cruelty, but the ordinary things brought home most vividly the horror of what Auschwitz was.
The second point — and it is a point touched on by the Tánaiste — is the memory of how easily the fundamental strengths of parliamentary democracy can crumble in the face of tyranny. It is a lesson to all of us that the values upon which our civilisation, our State and our parliamentary structure are based, especially the values of civil liberties and human rights, were so vulnerable, so unable to defend themselves in the face of fascism in the 1930s. It is a reminder to us that democracy, if it is not constantly renewed, strengthened and reinvigorated, is something which may not be able to fight back in its own defence. That is something we should never ever forget.
In remembering Auschwitz and the Jewish Holocaust 50 years on, we are not this morning in this House engaged in any empty or self-righteous gesturing. We cannot, we will not, we must not diminish the horrific culpability of the Nazis, both leaders and led, but we should recognise that their crimes were human crimes whose genocidal anti-Semitism grew out of the civilisation we all shared in and that their crimes were facilitated by a passivity that stretched from Moscow to Washington. The slogans of "Nie Wieder"—"Never again"— and "We must not forget" are not only essential to the future protection of the Jews and other vulnerable peoples, they have immediate and pressing implications.
Defence of the human rights of every person and people, as laid out in the UN declaration, calls for vigilance and determined activity by citizens, Parliaments and Governments around the world. This call we must apply first of all to ourselves as Irish citizens, Irish parliamentarians and as part of an Irish Government in defence of human rights at home and abroad. Failure to respect the basic human rights of the different, the stranger, the refugee or the otherwise powerless has too often resulted in death and destruction. Our own troubles have been a poignant, if limited, example of that. Current experiences in Bosnia, Rwanda and East Timor, to cite three widely dispersed areas, show how far the "Nie Wieder" attitude to genocide is from fulfilment. Let us remember Auschwitz for the enormous tragedy that it was for the Jews and their companions and as a salutary reminder of our continuing temptation to denial and passivity in the face of contemporary, if smaller, imitations.
A Chathaoirligh, it is difficult to contribute to this debate. It is difficult to express one's feelings about what happened at Auschwitz and the other concentration camps, the level of tragedy, the human suffering that the peoples who were annihilated in those camps felt. I have read on several occasions the account of Dr. Nyiszli, who survived Auschwitz, and it is chilling. It is frightening that human beings could treat their fellow human beings in such a way. We must never forget. We must always remind future generations of what happened in Germany to ensure that it does not happen again, and there are signs that it has happened in other areas. One only has to look at Bosnia and places like that to see how people are still suffering.
I wish to quote from Dr. Nyiszli's book where he describes the opening of the gas chamber on one occasion when he was there. He said:
The bodies were not lying here and there throughout the room, but piled in a mass to the ceiling. The reason for this was that the gas first inundated the lower layers of air, and rose but slowly towards the ceiling. This forced the victims to trample one another in a frantic effort to escape the gas. Yet a few feet higher up the gas reached them. What a struggle for life there must have been! Nevertheless it was merely a matter of two or three minutes' respite. If they had been able to think about what they were doing, they would have realised they were trampling their own children, their wives, their relatives. But they couldn't think. Their gestures were no more than the reflexes of the instinct of self-preservation.
Senator O'Toole referred to a point I feel strongly about, which was the Irish position of neutrality during the Second World War while this was taking place. It is a blot on our record that we were neutral during those terrible events. Ireland should have taken a firm approach to the genocide and should have fought against these atrocities, against Hitler and what he represented. We should have been strongly on the side of the Allies during the war.
I welcome the Chief Rabbi. Through the representatives of the Jewish community I convey the good wishes of the Fianna Fáil Party and Members on this side of the House to the Jewish community in Ireland.
This year is a painful reminder of the events of 1945 and before. I am honoured to be allowed to participate in this commemoration. I have walked through the gas chambers of Mauthausen, I have prayed at the memorial in Dachau and, as a member of a parliamentary delegation, I have been present at a wreath laying ceremony on behalf of this House in 1991 at the execution wall in Auschwitz.
I agree with Senator O'Toole's condemnation of the Polish President's actions on behalf, presumably, of the Polish people, who, despite their own wartime sufferings, which I do not wish to diminish in any way, indulged in appalling anti-semitism that stretched beyond the gates of Auschwitz when survivors of the Holocaust were shot by poles when they were repatriated to their homes. The rise of Fascism in Europe, and especially of anti-semitism in the former eastern bloc, is a cause of concern to us. Although I still have the slogan we heard earlier, "Never again", ringing in my ears from the death camp visitors' books, I cannot but cry in pain at the return of the Holocaust to former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, as referred to by the Tánaiste.
So much has been written about the Holocaust that any words of mine would be inadequate to attempt to describe the indescribable. The decision to destroy all the Jews of Nazi controlled Europe was discussed and finalised at a meeting summoned in december 1941 in the Wannsee suburb of Berlin. Those invited to Wannsee were senior officials from all the German Ministries, including the Ministry of Justice and the Foreign Office. The details of the conference were prepared by Adolf Eichmann, head of the special Jewish section of the SS. This detail is from Martin Gilbert's book Auschwitz and the Allies and I refer to it because people do not realise sometimes that the machine of death was a human invention. Nothing had been there before; it was all created and put in place by human endeavour. The killing machine was created by the minds of what might be otherwise described as good people.
The question has often been asked why Auschwitz was not bombed. The Jewish Agency had been asking for the bombing of Auschwitz. Martin Gilbert devotes a great deal of his book to this matter and he refers to it in these terms:
The test of the Allied response came in the summer of 1944, when the British and American policymakers were asked to bomb Auschwitz. At the time of this request the American Government possessed a great deal of information about Auschwitz, including both its location and its function, together with the technical ability to bomb both the railways lines leading to the camp and the gas chambers in the camp itself. The British policymakers had, in addition, Churchill's personal authority to examine a bombing scheme with a view to positive action. Yet even then, a few individuals scotched the Prime Minister's directive because, as one of them expressed it at the time, to send British pilots to carry it out would have then risked "valuable" lives.
I put that on the record to assuage Senator Neville and others. While I agree with the sentiments he expressed, we should not feel culpable that because of our neutrality we contributed the Holocaust. The Allies, who knew about it for a long time, had the means to do something.
In his book The Abandonment of the Jews, David S. Wyman, a Christian, says:
The Holocaust was certainly a Jewish tragedy. But it was not onlya Jewish tragedy. It was also a Christian tragedy, a tragedy for Western civilisation, and a tragedy for all humankind. The killing was done by people, to other people, while still other people stood by. The perpetrators, where they were not actually Christians arose from a Christian culture. The bystanders most capable of helping were Christians. The point should have been obvious. Yet comparatively few American non-Jews recognised that the plight of the European Jews was their plight too. Most were either unaware, did not care, or saw the European Jewish catastrophe as a Jewish problem, one for Jews to deal with. That explains, in part, why the United States did so little to help.
While I do not want to be a revisionist, I would like to address the controversy surrounding the role of Pope Pius XII during the war in the light of a recent programme on British television. I am grateful to my colleague, Senator Lydon, for posing such questions in an article. Ribbentrob, the German Foreign Minister, once declared: "I know that we had protests from the Vatican, that we had a whole desk full of protests". A question asked in this article is:
If Pius XII had protested, would Jewish lives had been saved? It was official Nazi policy to answer with reprisals. Prisoners came to dread such public statements.
Holland was the glaring example. When the Dutch bishops issued a condemnation, all Jews who had become Catholics were seized and sent to Auschwitz. Among them was the convert Edith Stein, Sister Benedicta of the Holy Cross in Carmel, later beatified by Pope John Paul II.
I can only put in context this awful part of a previous generation, a legacy which is still with us today, by referring to the foremost writer on the Holocaust, Primo Levi, a man who survived Auschwitz but who many years later could no longer live with the awful reality of it. It is important that we understand what it was about. In his book If this is a Man — The Truce, he talks about how they were put into cattle trucks and about arriving at Auschwitz in early morning.
The climax came suddenly. The door opened with a crash, and the dark echoed with outlandish orders in that curt, barbaric barking of Germans in command which seems to give vent to a millennial anger. A vast platform appeared before us, lit up by reflectors. A little beyond it, a row of lorries. Then everything was silent again. Someone translated: we had to climb down with our luggage and deposit it alongside the train. In a moment the platform was swarming with shadows. But we were afraid to break that silence: everyone busied himself with his luggage, searched for someone else, called to somebody, but timidly, in a whisper.
A dozen SS men stood around, legs akimbo, with an indifferent air. At a certain moment they moved among us, and in a subdued tone of voice, with faces of stone, began to interrogate us rapidly, one by one, in bad Italian. They did not interrogate everybody, only a few: `How old? Healthy or ill?' And on the basis of the reply they pointed in two different directions.
Everything was as silent as an aquarium, or as in certain dream sequences. We had expected something more apocalyptic: they seemed simple police agents. It was disconcerting and disarming. Someone dared to ask for his luggage: They replied, `luggage afterwards'. Someone else did not want to leave his wife: they said,`together again afterwards'. Many mothers did not want to be separated from their children: they said `good, good, stay with the child'. They behaved with the calm assurance of people doing their normal duty of every day. But Renzo stayed an instant too long to say good-bye to Francesca, his fiancée, and with a single blow they knocked him to the ground. It was their everyday duty.
In less than ten minutes all the fit men had been collected together in a group. What happened to the others, to the women, to the children, to the old men, we could establish neither then nor later: the night swallowed them up, purely and simply. Today, however, we know that in that rapid and summary choice each one of us had been judged capable or not of working usefully for the Reich: we know that of our convoy no more than ninety-six men and twenty-nine women entered the respective camps of Monowitz-Buna and Birkenau, and that of all the others, more than five hundred in number, not one was living two days later.
I wish to share my time with Senator O'Sullivan.
Is that agreed? Agreed.
It is fitting in one sense that the Public Gallery this morning should be full of children. It is also fitting that we have represented here members of the Jewish community, not least my dear friend and colleague, the Minister for Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Taylor.
I have never failed, either when reading about or watching films on the Holocaust, to feel dehumanised and ashamed. We are all to blame, irrespective of revisionism. It is only in the recent past that Churches and nations have shown the maturity to shoulder the blame. It is an event that is impossible to comprehend. I find it hard to comprehend even now. When I was five years of age playing in the streets the representatives of a so-called civilised nation were putting children into furnaces.
I am grateful to a distinguished member of the Jewish community, Joe Briscoe, for giving me some idea of the scope of this event. I did not know— few possibly do—that in Berlin only 17 children survived this horror. Even as we speak about it, the scope of the horror is still there. The name "Auschwitz" can raise the hair on the back of one's neck. I hope it always does; the day it does not is the day it will happen again. Although one third of European Jewry survived the Holocaust, only 5,000 children survived. Therefore, in a sense, all Jews living today are survivors. When we pay this tribute in this House, we should have the mounds of ashes in Auschwitz at the forefront of our minds. We salute the victims and apologise to them today.
Pastor Neumueller said in his famous quote:
First they came for the Socialists, but I wasn't a Socialist and so I did not protest. Then they came for the trade unionists, but I wasn't a trade unionist so I did not protest. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not protest. When they came for me there was nobody left to protest.
We should put that quote into our minds and hearts. We must ensure that whenever anti-semitism or discrimination of any sort raises its head, if we are not vigilant we will then contribute, even in the smallest way, to something that may again evolve into not a human tragedy but a systematised destruction of a race. It is fitting that this State should entrust to a member of the Jewish community, in the person of Deputy Taylor, the responsibility of vindicating the rights of our minorities in his portfolio as Minister for Equality and Law Reform. It is also fitting that the vindication of their rights should be reposed in him, something he so ably does in his daily work.
It is difficult to convey in a few minutes the sense of horror I have always felt whenever I have watched old newsreels and the sight of that child in the Warsaw ghetto with his hands up wearing a cap——
He survived.
When I was playing in the street children like him were being fed into a furnace by a so called civilised nation. It is right and proper that we salute those who perished. We should pledge ourselves that whenever we are called upon to make a stand on behalf of human rights, wherever it is, we make that stand in the knowledge that we cannot afford to do nothing.
In looking back 50 years later at the horrors of Auschwitz, it is a natural reaction for us as human beings to recoil in horror rather than face what happened. We are also tempted to lay the blame on the barbarity of the perpetrators in a way that dehumanises them and in doing that exonerate our own humanity. Instead, we must learn from history and build a world society in which such barbarity will not recur. To do that we have to try in some way to understand man's inhumanity to his fellow being and how so-called ordinary decent people, living in the society of the time, could turn a blind eye to a regime that slaughtered so many of their fellow human beings.
That society built up slowly. This did not happen overnight; its support was built up gradually in the nation. It started by offering people a hope and the prospect of a better standard for themselves and those they saw as their own people. It offered them pride in their own identity and culture. However, gradually — it was only gradually — this was transformed to a downgrading and denial of the humanity of the cultures, and eventually the lives, of other people on the European and world stages. One must remember that it did not happen as a sudden horror but gradually built up within the society of the time. While having pride in our own culture and identity, we also have to respect that of others. That is the lesson. If we do not do that, then there is the danger that racism and fascism will strengthen again. This could happen in our society as easily as anybody else's society.
Indeed, as other Senators have said, there is alarming evidence that the neofascists and the far right wing are currently building and strengthening in Europe, especially eastern Europe. Other Senators have also referred to the situation in the former Yugoslavia and others to East Timor and Africa. This is built up at times as an anger against subgroups and other members of society, against immigrants in many European situations. There is an anger being built up against other people rather than against the inequalities in society. That has to be confronted. We have to support opposition to fascism and racism, irrespective of wherever it breaks out. This must be done not only in other societies, cultures and peoples, but also in ourselves and our own society.
In marking the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz with sadness and collective guilt, we should look into our own hearts and society, into societies around the world and support in whatever way we can opposition to any tendencies towards racism and fascism and any development of such regimes wherever they may occur.
I wish to share my time with Senator Dardis.
Is that agreed? Agreed.
I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. We need constant reminders of what happened there to help to ensure it never happens again. It has been said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Tolerance, understanding of discrimination and anti-discrimination in any form must be worked at and cannot be taken for granted. Many Senators referred today to the recent happenings in Bosnia, East Timor and Rwanda. We cannot pretend that we do not know what is happening there and that we did not know what happened in Germany. We, as a nation, should be ashamed of ourselves. Even if the Allies, as Senator Mooney said, knew and did nothing, that is no justification for us to say that we could not do anything. People turned a blind eye to what was happening. Because it did not directly affect us, we ignored it.
I visited Auschwitz in 1981. I remember at the time wondering how anybody could imagine and understand the horrors and chilling events which occurred in this place. It is an old army barracks but unless one knew or read of what had happened there, the enormity of the atrocities would be very difficult to comprehend.
On the bus journey from Craców to Auschwitz I read an interview in a magazine with a woman, now living in England, who had survived Auschwitz. She was 15 years old when she was a prisoner there. Reading that interview gave me an insight into what happened and what life in Auschwitz was like for the people who were prisoners there. Senator Manning mentioned his conversation with Professor Jim Dooge this morning during which Professor Dooge spoke about the cases and mounds of shoes, including children's shoes, and the mountains of human hair. This helped to bring back to me the scale of what happened and to realise that we are talking about ordinary human beings like all of us here. Looking at photographs as people were admitted and their dates and details helped to focus the mind on the fact that they were human beings. It was not just a story about which we were reading or hearing, it was something that happened.
I found it extremely difficult to imagine that the people carrying out these atrocities were supposed to be civilised. They murdered and gassed children in the chambers during the day and went home to their own families at night. I found that very chilling. We say we are a civilised people and say we will never allow this to happen again but, we must remember that atrocities are happening in the world today. What are we doing about them? The woman who gave the interview in the magazine was Kitty Harte. She visited Auschwitz after 35 years. The pain of going back there was indescribable. She and her mother survived Auschwitz and went to live in England with relatives. The most difficult thing for her was that she was not allowed to talk about what happened. She believed the rest of the world did not want to know. It is most important that the rest of the world knows what happened. We must hear about these atrocities and listen and talk about what is happening in the rest of the world today. That is the only way we will ever ensure that these atrocities will never happen again.
At one time I thought world leaders, such as the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Britain, should constantly visit places like Auschwitz to be reminded of what happened there. I now realise that it is up to all ordinary people and to us who are privileged to be Members of this House to articulate about what happened there and to constantly remind ourselves of it. I am grateful to Senator Norris for raising this issue. I, too, was ashamed of the fracas which arose on the Order of Business. The horrors of Auschwitz are of enormous importance and must be constantly raised and discussed.
I thank Senator Honan for giving me time to speak on this very important matter. It is important that this House records events such as this. This was the worst atrocity in recorded human history and is likely, we hope, to remain so. That is one of the messages for us. At the moment we have witnesses to what happened there, but as time passes, the witnesses will die and then the only evidence will be on film. It is important that we continue to see on film what happened when and before the gates were opened and that we continually remind ourselves of what happened in Auschwitz and during the Holocaust.
I am very pleased that there are representatives of the Jewish community here this morning. I am also pleased that the Minister for Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Taylor, was here at the beginning of the debate as a representative of that community. We have to accept that it was the Jewish community who bore the brunt of the Holocaust. Other groups also suffered, such as homosexuals and gypsies.
What makes the Holocaust so difficult to comprehend is that these people were murdered not because they had committed atrocities but because of who and what they were.
It has been said that this could not happen again. It could and is happening. It is happening in Bosnia, East Timor and Rwanda and we were reminded of that this morning. As far as possible it must not be allowed happen again. The Nazis were the primary agents of the atrocity but the international community bore a responsibility in terms of knowing at the highest level what was taking place and appearing not to do anything about it.
There is a message of hope that humanity existed even in the midst of such darkness. There were people of outstanding humanity and talent, such as artists and musicians, who brought their culture with them, and survived in the face of such atrocity. The most famous person who comes most readily to mind is Oskar Schindler. I read the book about him but did not see the film. He was an example of humanity surviving that period.
The lesson for Irish society is that we must be conscious of our responsibilities to minorities and to people who differ from us. Perhaps we bear a certain guilt in how we receive people in this country who are fleeing from the type of atrocities which are occurring even today; perhaps our doors are not open wide enough to people who are trying to escape such atrocities. This may be a lesson for us. As Senator Manning said, freedom and democracy are very delicate flowers and we have a responsibility in this Parliament and as a democracy to ensure that the freedom and democracy we treasure continue and that we remind ourselves of what happened in Auschwitz and the Holocaust.
May I share my time with Senator Kelly?
I may have a problem with that as each group has only eight minutes.
I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate on the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. One's first insight into the Holocaust was the film The Nuremberg Trials and the statement to the effect that what we thought was a passing phase became a way of life in Germany. Some 57 years ago Ireland refused entry to Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany on a regular basis. In 1938 an official in the Department of Justice wrote an internal memorandum to the effect that it would be unwise to consider admitting refugees with Jewish blood. When commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz we should also remember the part played by Ireland and other European democracies in the Holocaust, which is marked mainly by silence.
Today we are commemorating the carefully executed extermination of around six million Jews, gypsies, gays, socialists and political dissidents. The Holocaust was unique only in its ordered thoroughness. It is just under a year ago that we witnessed live on our television screens the wholesale genocide in Rwanda. Even as we debate the Holocaust, several minor attempts at genocide are taking place all over the world. The Indonesians continue their reign of terror in East Timor. Elsewhere wars, largely of ethnic origin, continue to rage. Bosnia and Chechnya are two of the better known conflicts. What we are commemorating today is the end of one chapter in a continuing story of ethnic, religious and political persecution. As Europeans, however, we ought to have a particular responsibility to remember the Holocaust and to ensure that it is not repeated. We have a responsibility to ensure that pseudo-historians, like David Irving, who continue to maintain that the Holocaust never occurred, are denied a platform everywhere in Europe.
Hear, hear.
We also have a responsibility to fight racism and intolerance wherever we find it, and it is often closer than we think. As we commemorate the Holocaust let us also remember the hundreds of thousands of gypsies who were murdered between 1938 and 1945. They have become a footnote in the story of the Holocaust and, like other groups, many of the survivors have still received no compensation from the German Government. Throughout Europe they continue to be persecuted, whether as travellers in Ireland or romany gypsies in England and mainland Europe. Until we have cleaned up our own act and ensured that no one in our own country is subject to persecution simply because of their race, religion or political affiliation, we will not be able to fully celebrate the end of the Holocaust. In this regard I look forward to Ireland's ratification of the United Nations Convention against Torture and Racial Discrimination. That will be the best commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz.
I would like to raise a point of information which I think is historically important.
I understand that we are taking statements and I do not think that there is a procedure for raising a point of information.
It is a point of order.
Yes, it is a point of order in that case. The argument was made that the Vatican did not intervene because of the possibility of reprisals, as had apparently happened in the case of protests by the Dutch bishops. It must be remembered that 49 people were sent to the camps as a result of that. Balance that on the scale with six and a half million. What reprisal was the Vatican afraid of? This is part of a disinformation programme. If you look at the names Edith Stein and Maximilian Kolbe that were mentioned, Edith Stein was Jewish and was betrayed by the mother superior of her own convent——
The Senator mentioned on the Order of Business that it would be a dignified statement, so I would like it to be maintained that way.
Dignified by truth and historical accuracy and not by disinformation, which is being systematically planned by the Vatican.
The Senator made his statement already. He cannot come in a second time.
I hope that the words I want to say on this particular subject do not get the better of me emotionally because I speak with great sadness in my heart when I think of Auschwitz, but not a little joy — for an odd reason. When I think of Auschwitz, I think of a young woman, Marie Wilson, who, with me, watching a BBC documentary programme on the Holocaust was deeply affected by the documentary's account of man's inhumanity to man. I was touched by her compassion for people so remote from her world at 15 years of age. I was further moved when, later, we found in her diary a note she wrote on that very evening saying that she was "converted to Christianity" because of watching that programme. Little did we know then the fate that awaited her.
Now, through her death and the sadness it has brought to our family, I feel a link with the millions of families destroyed by the horrors of the Holocaust. Reflecting on this, I am saddened to realise how slowly we learn from history, how easily man forgets or chooses to forget that hatred and violence serve no purpose. It is right that 50 years later we remember those who died at Auschwitz and the other camps, but let us not forget those who survived. Their witness, courage, determination and faith are an inspiring example of the nobility of the human spirit and its refusal to be bowed by evil.
I think of the Dutch lady, Corrie Tembout, a Christian, incarcerated at Ravensbruck, where her sister died. She survived and spent the rest of her life preaching forgiveness around the world. I think of a prayer found in the pocket of a dead child in Ravensbruck which read:
O Lord, remember not only the men and women of goodwill, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all of the suffering they have inflicted upon us. Instead remember the fruits we have borne because of this suffering; our fellowship, our loyalty to one another, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart that has grown from this trouble. When our persecutors come to be judged by You, let all of these fruits that we have borne be their forgiveness.
It is not too late to learn from that suffering that life is a precious gift to be honoured with respect and compassion. Above all, this means that we must forgive those who killed. I will not pretend that forgiveness is easy, nor that it eases grief, but anger and bitterness eat at the soul and can bring only more pain. We have the opportunity now in this corner of God's garden to change a history of bloodshed. Let us remember the past without rancour and redeem it by turning away wrath and reaching out to one another with love. The highest tribute we can pay to the victims of Auschwitz is to resolve that such cruelty can never happen again.
