HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 2013
Ambassador Yosef Amrani:
"As a New Year 2013 begun, as the clock pendulum maintains its routine movement,
time and history, the two most powerful experiences in human life, progress
sometimes in separate directions, never to meet and converge. Sometimes, by
destiny or circumstances, history is present again in current events.
The writer-historian Barbara Tuchman in her book „The Guns of August“, also known
as „August 1914“(1962) addressed, maybe indirectly, the question: What is history?
Historians may disagree and argue with the „Tuchman's Law” which helped her
convey her own reading of History. This „Law” is relevant to our discussion today.
Tuchman asserts that „Disaster” is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded
accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous
whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. The fact is
that one can come home in the evening – on a lucky day, without having
encountered more than one or two of these phenomena. This has led me to
formulate Tuchman's Law as follows: “The fact of being reposted multiplies the
apparent extent of any deplorable development by five to tenfold“.
Nothing has been sporadic with the Jewish Holocaust of the World War II, not in
time, not in place. The Holocaust has not been just a disaster magnified by the
media. On the contrary, the media at the time failed to report its scope and horror
and the vicious methodology of killing and mass murder. It is only after the war, a
sarcastic historical ipso facto, that the world has been discovering the immensity of
the historic event, if words can minimize this into a neutrally washed word as
„event“.
As the years go by, the generation of Holocaust children and babies have become
grandparents and great-grandparents themselves; the world has changed, ideologies
have collapsed, new technologies have been invented and this continent, the
birthplace of philosophies, ideologies, culture and art, good and evil, is advancing
towards a united Europe. Human tendency is not necessarily to forget or ignore but
to move on with time and history, sometimes even to repress. Repression is our selfdefense invented mechanism. By moving on we choose to live but can we live
without memories, without history being present, if not in our lives at least in our
identity and inner being?
The numbers, the bestiality, the methodology of evil, the failure of humans, nations,
peoples, spirit, the collaboration of majority with evil, silence of Church and
powerful should be part of our collective modern human being identity. We are
committed to listen to witnesses, hear their story, learn what happened and realize
that behind the words, behind one word, the Holocaust, so many lives have been
lost, so many dreams have been extinguished, and so many hopes have not come
true. Jewish culture teaches that the one who saves one soul has saved the whole
world. We can paraphrase it and talk of so many worlds lost in the Holocaust.
The victims are those who perished and those who escaped the horror. Some are
still with us and we should listen to them and learn, realize that it did happen and
derive the lesson.
Hannah Arendt in her discussion of the Eichmann trial tried to provide another
perspective which 50 years later calls for a deeper insight. In her book „Eichmann in
Jerusalem: Report on the Banality of Evil“ (1963), much criticized at the time for the
use of the word „ banality“ as well as her attempt to look into the soul of the devil,
Arendt provided us with an analysis, worth attention and discussion, especially with
time passing and the certain historic distance taking place. Defining Eichmann's role
as banality of evil is in no way a defense of the murderer, perpetrator or
collaborator. Eichmann's actions, and actions of many others, those who murdered
and those who ignored or kept quiet, have nothing to do with Kant's categorical
imperative.
As humans we should maintain and preserve the role of legislators for the moral self;
we shall be the ones distinguishing moral and immoral, right and wrong, good and
evil, and not delegate to a supreme flesh and blood authority.
In describing the state of mind of the human beast, Arendt writes: „He (Eichmann)
had ceased to live according to Kantian principles, that he had known it, and that he
had consoled himself with the thoughts that he no longer was master of his own
deeds, that he was unable to change anything“.
Looking back at Arendt's teaching and insight should be our message to future
generations. The historic event is there to be remembered, never forgotten, to teach
us a lesson; it happened and people took part in it. Extremism, fanaticism, hate,
intolerance, ignorance can lead to bestiality of society. Each individual's own
judgment in distinguishing between right and wrong is the barrier, the guarantee
against evil.
We are today in the presence of political leaders, teachers, hopefully some students
We should all take the message of the dangerous character of the ordinary and
routine from history, from the lessons of the Holocaust. In Europe, in 1939s and
1940s human values collapsed, civilization failed and humans, as they joined the
stream, are responsible! The Nazi race theory, the race laws of Nuremberg and the
killing machine were possible in a society and culture where people as humans
became equally redundant, losing their own judgment and influenced by the flock.
A new century, a new millennium has arrived and we have a moral historic mission
to remember and learn. Almost 70 years after the Holocaust which liquidated a third
of the Jewish people, Israelis and Jews have an unavoidable legacy, to carry the
torch, never forget and find the way to keep the memory alive for the sake of
humanity, for the sake of a better world for future generations. It is up to us to teach
and learn, remember, live normal moral life. This is how history should be involved in
our life as individuals and nations. Maybe with the lessons of history as part of our
lives we can succeed where past generations failed. It was Theodore Adorno who
wrote immediately after the World War II that the purpose and object of progressive
thinking, enlightment purpose is to release the human being from fear and establish
his sovereignty. Alas, the world (of the 40s) is torn with disasters and tragedies"
(Dialectic of Enlightment, 1947). To overcome the fear we need to learn, remember
and maintain moral self-jurisprudence of our actions".