Int'l Holocaust Day Goethe Institute, Mumbai, January Consul General of Germany H.E. Michael Siebert,

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1 Int'l Holocaust Day Goethe Institute, Mumbai, January 2013 Consul General of Germany H.E. Michael Siebert, Dr Marla Stukenberg, Director, Goethe Institute Mumbai, Friends, 68 years have passed since the end of World War II, and the Holocaust continues to stand at the center of Jewish and universal dialogue in a range of historical, humanistic and value-based contexts. Even today, it is still very difficult to speak about the holocaust. So much was said, so many volumes of books were written, and still we have so little understanding to so many questions How such a horrible event could have happened? How can we explain such a human tragedy? How can we start to understand the pain of the people who have somehow survived, but lost everything they ever had? Where are all of the vibrant communities from all around Europe, communities that were wiped off the face of earth completely? Can you even imagine the horror of infants and little children, being torn away from their mothers' arms and being led to the gas chambers? And the main question is still WHY. Why did it happen?

2 In fact, the events on the backdrop of the WW2 were so unbelievable that it s hard to imagine how one the most advanced civilization of that time committed acts aiming to erase another human race from this earth with such sophistication. The Holocaust is not just another topic we study in our schools in Israel as part of the curriculum. Almost every Israeli or Jewish family around the world has a very personal story connecting them to the Holocaust; most of us lost members of our close or extended family and it still influences our lives personally even as 2 nd, 3 rd or 4 th generation after the events. The International Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27 th January According to the General Assembly Resolution, every member state of the UN has an obligation to honor the victims of the Nazi era and to develop educational programs to help prevent future genocides. This year s theme is Rescue during the Holocaust: The Courage to Care. This day is special not just for us, the Jewish people, but to the entire humanity The Holocaust, which resulted in the annihilation of 6 million European Jews, 2 million Gypsies, 15,000 homosexual people and so many others, by the Nazi regime during the WWII is a period that should make every human being ashamed and introspect. We must draw lessons from the past and apply them to the present in order to secure the future of the world. We must accept the right of people to live irrespective of their race, religion, nationality or sexuality.

3 And in order to do that, we first need to acknowledge what was so unique about the holocaust. Bcos unfortunately, we saw throughout the years since the end of the 2 nd World War that genocides happened in other places around the world Bosnia, Ruanda etc. But the holocaust was the 1 st and only attempt to systematically murder all Jews all over the world, just bcos they were Jewish. For the first time in history, a modern state makes a decision to track down, mark, isolate, humiliate, concentrate, transfer and murder every person of an ethnic group everywhere on earth for ideological reasons. Why do we acknowledge the issue of the Holocaust in India? India is a special country for the Jewish people. This is one of the few countries in the world where the Jewish people never suffered from Anti-Semitism, and some princely states in the British mandate even gave refuge to Jewish people from Poland during the WWII. There are a few reasons for that firstly, racism and hatred are a universal chalenges, none of us is immune against it. The lessons of the holocaust should be in front of eyes, so that we can learn the results of racism, intolerance, anti-semitism and xenophobia. Secondly, I find myself awfully upset when I see books like Mein Kempf displayed among the best sellers in many of the book shops that I visit or to see shops being open carrying images of Hitler and the Nazi Swastika. I am aware that one of the main reasons behind that is lack of knowledge of the world history. Other reasons I came across range from lack of emphasis on the Holocaust education in the Indian schools to the justification that

4 Nazis are seen as opponent to the British Empire. Nevertheless, I find it completely unacceptable and wonder why people living in a country like India, which has many peaceful heroes such as Mahatma Gandhi, need a hero like Hitler. In order to raise public awareness in India about the Holocaust, we recently sent the first delegation of Indian educators to Israel for a special training program, organized by Yad Vashem, our national Holocaust museum and research center. Hopefully, they will soon be able to implement the knowledge they've acquired and include the topic of the Holocaust in their future curriculums, And thirdly, though years have passed, the forces of evil and denial still exist in our world. The Iranian regime has systematically been denying the Holocaust through assembling Holocaust deniers from all over the world and organizing exhibitions of caricatures mocking the Holocaust. President Ahmadinejad is openly denying the Holocaust and then directly denies the right of existence of the state of Israel and threatens from the dais of the UN General Assembly "to wipe Israel off from the world map". From here, it's only a small step to revival of the Nazi ideology. The civilized world, including India, must be aware of it before it's too late. I would like to thank the Consul General of Germany, Mr. Siebert, for agreeing to be the co-host of this evening, together with Dr. Marla Stukenberg, the director of Goethe Institute. It wasn t something that we could have done years ago, but today our

5 2 countries are very close allies and that's another proof to the nature of the human kind and the strength of true values over evil. Ladies and Gentlemen, events like the Holocaust can never happen again. Therefore, it is our collective responsibility to arise and do the best we can: We should remember the victims, spread awareness, remind ourselves of the horrors human being are capable of causing each other and act before it's too late.