Discurso del Presidente de la Federación de Comunidades judías de España, Jacobo Israel. Versión inglés.

Mr Minister of Justice, Madame Minister of Education and Science, Mr Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education and Science, authorities, ladies and gentlemen:

First, allow me, in the name of the different Jewish, gypsy, and Republican collectives that suffered from imprisonment in Nazi extermination camps, and on my own behalf, to thank the Ministers of Justice, Education, and Foreign Affairs and Co-operation for organising this act in remembrance and commemoration of the Holocaust, and for their presence here today.

Shoah information programmes should both demonstrate the singularity of this event, and have an educational objective. What is singular about Nazism is not its treatment of those who held ideas different from its own, nor its violence against those who were captured in acts of war or resistance, as harsh and inhuman as it was. In this, unfortunately, they were not, nor have they been, the only ones.

What is singularly disturbing about Nazism is its racial extermination policy, principally involving the Jewish people. This policy explains what was specific about the Shoah: due to being what they were, that is, due to an inalienable component of their identity, to a fact of birth rather than their ideas or their acts, peaceful men and women, unarmed, of all ages, from children to the aged, entire families, were arrested in cities and towns all over Europe.

The Shoah was not the result of a battle, of a natural tragedy, or of an explosion of primal hatred from a neighbouring people; rather, it was a planned action, carried out by men in a methodical, scientific, industrial fashion, collecting the victims-peaceful citizens-to then collate them and proceed to exterminate them.

In Holocaust education, we must make a distinction amongst three kinds of actors: murderers, victims, and witnesses.

It is precisely by analysing the Shoah from the viewpoint of the witnesses´ role, and not the role of the victims, that we can lay the foundations for the moral training of our children-because the victims had no choice.

A small proportion of them could get out of Europe, and the rest found themselves in a huge, sinister jail without being able to resist the pressure of the murderers in any way other than hiding, which was no easy task.

But the witnesses could act, and they did so in different ways: some joined the murderers; others looked favourably upon their actions; many just accepted that these things happen, thinking it "wasn´t their business". Another group acted avariciously, taking advantage of the victims for economic gain; others sympathised with them, but did nothing; and finally, others risked themselves to save the lives of others. This entire spectrum of moral decision-making can be seen amongst these witnesses, which is why Shoah education can serve as a source of inspiration for moral education.

When we analyse the history of the Shoah, we see that in the countries where the majority of the population opposed the transport and deportation of Jews, as in Denmark and, to a lesser degree, in Bulgaria, most of the Jews in these countries were able to save themselves. According to the conceptualisation of the Jewish Spanish children´s writer Eva Nerkel, better known as Marga Donato, who left the country as part of the Republican exile, true education should follow this motto: "In the face of an injustice that it is materially impossible to avoid, or to mitigate, one must at least have the courage to protest."

But let us go back to this act itself. To some, the Shoah might seem like something far away-not so to the Spanish Republicans imprisoned in concentration camps; not so to the gypsy community; not so to the Jews. Besides the millions of Ashkenazic Jews who were murdered, tens of thousands of Sephardics from the Balkans, Greece, and the Greek islands disappeared in the crematory ovens. Thousands of Spanish Republicans also suffered internment and hard labour in Mauthausen and other camps, and hundreds of Jews of Spanish nationality proceeding from Greece, and those who acquired it due to Primo de Rivera´s 1924 decree, were imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen.

We are gathered here today to honour the millions of Jews, gypsies, and members of other groups who died as victims of Nazi racist violence, in what was Europe´s greatest catastrophe. The memory of these millions of people who were murdered demands that we share the pain of their disappearance, and of the conditions under which this disappearance occurred; that we remember them as human beings who experienced an inhuman tragedy.

Holocaust Remembrance should not be limited to remembering the victims whose lives were cut short, amongst them a million and a half murdered Jewish children, but should also serve to remember all those who suffered in the concentration camps due to their political ideas, because they had fought against Nazism, or for other reasons-which is also to remember the tragedy of Europe.

This commemoration should also serve to honour the just men who saved the lives of those pursued by Nazi fanaticism, amongst them various Spanish diplomats who carried out their work in the spirit of brotherhood during those dark times. May their memory, the memory of goodness, shine forever. And by remembering the survivors of this tragedy, who were able to start a new life-including some here with us today, a small but chosen group of deportees-we send out a dual message of hope for the future. First, that if evil could not triumph then, it might never do so; and second, the fact that these men and women were able to remake their lives shows that humanity can be reborn, even from smoke and ashes.

But Holocaust Remembrance, a necessary remembrance, should illuminate our observation of the present. Today, when just a week ago marked the sixty-second anniversary of the Death March in which so many survivors were brought by the Nazis at the end of the war from Auschwitz to the camps of Dora and Bergen-Belsen, we are concerned to see how a government is organising a contest of satirical cartoons about the Holocaust, and immediately afterwards a Holocaust conference with a clearly negationist agenda. This country, a member of the United Nations, represents today the greatest bastion of anti-Semitism, and the greatest danger for the values of European democracy.

Emmanuele Lévinas taught us, reflecting on the old Jewish saying, that "all men are responsible for each other". Holocaust education-that is, education against Auschwitz and everything that it represents-and Lévinas´ reflection should serve to morally educate our youth about how to relate to their peers in a spirit of shared, mutual responsibility, appreciating each others´ similarities and respecting each others´ differences.

Next year, may we remember once again the victims, the survivors, and the just, in a world where democracy and freedom shine even more brightly. Thank you very much.