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| You are here: 2000 / Workshops, Panels and Seminars / Panel 1: Holocaust Education - Where Are We Going? / Presentation by Dr. Samuel Pisar | |||||||||
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Report from Panel 1 on Holocaust Education - Where Are We Going? Presentation by Mr. Ben Helfgott Presentation by Dr. Samuel Pisar Presentation by Mrs. Hédi Fried Presentation by Dr. Dalia Ofer Presentation by Dr. William L. Shulman Presentation by Mr. Stuart E. Eizenstat Presentation by Dr. Samuel Pisar Pisar, Samuel Presentation by Dr. Samuel Pisar Your Majesty, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:
To address, at the dawn of a new millennium, so illustrious an assembly on so grave a subject, is both an immense honor and an awesome responsibility. As one of those who have experienced the Shoah in their flesh and their souls, I am groping for the voice of the young Untermensch from my previous incarnation - the skeletal subhuman with shaved head and sunken eyes, who began life in the ethnic cauldrons of a fratricidal Europe, and was meant to give it up, at the age of 13, in its biggest infernos. There is no need to dwell on the horrors I have endured and witnessed before my miraculous liberation by an American tank column. Suffice it to record the mind-boggling fact that in an unprecedented challenge to man and God, Hitler's evil ideology had decreed the annihilation of an entire people, simply because they were born Jews. As an adolescent in Auschwitz, while the gas chambers belched fire and smoke, I was convinced that even Jesus Christ and all his twelve apostles, if they had lived in my time, would have been there with me; for their blood was as tainted as mine. Under the largely indifferent eyes of our neighbors and fellow-citizens, we were excluded from society, communal life and the professions. Our assets and belongings were arianized, confiscated or plundered, our places of worship desecrated or razed to the ground, our families dismembered, women, children and old people sent to the ovens at once, able-bodied men consigned to slave labor - their death merely deferred. Speak of human rights? Today, every act of ethnic cleansing, religious carnage, xenophobic violence and rabid nationalism, conjures up in my mind the road back to the abyss. Among the six million who perished during this greatest catastrophe that ever befell human civilization, there were one and a half-million children, including every single child in my school. These were the children who never learned, the teachers who never taught, the scientists who never invented, the poets who never wrote, the musicians who never played - the children who would have so enriched our world if they had been allowed to live. We, the last survivors of these gruesome events, are now disappearing one by one. Soon history will speak about the Holocaust at best, in the impersonal code of researchers, scholars and novelists, at worst in the malevolent tones of revisionists and falsifiers. This perfidious process has already begun. But as long as we are here, we have a sacred legacy to transmit to our fellow-men. For we know in our bones that the human animal is capable of the worst as of the best, of madness as of genius. We know that the unthinkable remains possible. The task before this conference is not to lament the past, but to secure the future. This is why, Mr. Prime Minister, your noble initiative is so important, far-seeing and timely. The 20th century has ended in the same barbarous way in which it began - with a bloodbath. First Armenians, then Jews and Gypsies, followed by Cambodians, Tutsis, Bosnians, Kosovars, and now Chechens, the list of its victims is endless, as is the list of its crimes against humanity and their murderous perpetrators, some of whom enjoy scandalous impunity to the present day. Is every generation condemned to reliving the same nightmares? As we embark upon the 21st century, we must close ranks and dedicate ourselves to a new humanism rooted in universal ethical values, if we are to rid the world of the scourge of racist, religious and terrorist mayhem. This imperative in our mental evolution as a species must be pursued with the same determination, energy and audacity that enabled our ancestors, the apes, to emerge from their caves. You, the eminent political leaders, academicians, pedagogues and social scientists here present, indeed, people of goodwill everywhere, must soon take the torch from the trembling hands of the survivors of genocidal slaughter, and become the trusted custodians of our testament, with its visceral cry : "never again!". We hope and pray that the archives of hell, which document our unique, tragic experience, our warning to mankind of horrors yet to come, will help you forge the tools of education, remembrance and research - tools with which to build defenses against such horrors in the classrooms and schoolbooks of children, in the hearts and minds of adults. That they will help you find effective ways to punish and deter the political predators who kill and maim in the name of ideology, and to honor the righteous who, like Wallenberg, Schindler, Sugihara and many other less famous saviors of Jews, risk their lives to rescue the innocent. That they will help you understand the causes, the processes, the folly that can push democracies into the clutches of tyrants. If I have allowed my memory to speak, to invoke the blood of the grim past and the hope for a better future, it is because our children and grandchildren need to know. They need to arm themselves against the traps, the hypocrisies, the false idols of history, in order to ensure that what happened to my generation will not happen to theirs. The pious rhetoric of statesmen on these primordial issues has too often anaesthetized public opinion and masked the absence of a concerted political will. Such passivity in face of the ongoing proliferation of global violence has recently outraged and mobilized public conscience on all continents and provoked a powerful clamor for action. May the teachings inspired by this conference and the policies shaped under your leadership, bring the world greater compassion, tolerance and peace. Samuel Pisar
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Introduction Opening Session: Messages and speeches Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches Workshops, Panels and Seminars
Other Activities |
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| For information about this production and the Stockholm International Forum Conference Series please go to www.humanrights.gov.se or contact Information Rosenbad, SE-103 33 Stockholm, Sweden | |||||||||