Discurso del ministro de Asuntos Exteriores y de Cooperación, Miguel Ángel Moratinos. English Version.

We are about to take our leave after this Commemoration of the Official Day of Holocaust Remembrance and Prevention of Crimes against Humanity, which was established by the Council of Ministers in December 2004.

Allow me to begin my remarks by looking back briefly on what we have achieved since then in terms of remembrance. By way of summary, we can say that the announcements made by the Prime Minister and by other members of the government at remembrance events held in recent years have been materialised.

In January 2005 the Prime Minister expressed the government’s firm commitment to Holocaust remembrance and education, its resolve to include Spain in the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, and its willingness to cooperate closely with Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem.

Since giving that commitment we have worked tirelessly, as evidenced by Spain’s current status on the Task Force. First we were admitted as an observer and then as a liaison country, the preliminary steps to full membership, which we hope to attain this year.

We warmly welcomed the choice of Yad Vashem as the recipient of the 2007 Prince of Asturias Award for Concord, a candidacy strongly endorsed by the Spanish government. The award strengthens our commitment to Holocaust remembrance and education, as articulated during the present legislature

One year ago, the Minister of Education and Science announced in this same auditorium that the Holocaust would be included in the Spanish education system for the first time. And we have done just that, proof being the various Decrees adopted by the government to give effect to the Education Act.

To the survivors of the Holocaust of Spanish-Jewish origin who were present at the commemoration last year we expressed our desire to restore the Jewish memories of Spain. Today, the Casa Sefarad-Israel is a reality.

We have striven to ensure these steps are irreversible, that they should form part of a veritable State policy, regardless of electoral vicissitudes and party-biased debates. That was, and remains, our commitment to you, the bearers of the memories of the victims of Nazism.

We gather today for a third consecutive year here in the Complutense University’s Auditorium, which contributes so much to the solemnity merited by our ceremony, dignifying the victims to whom we are paying tribute. Thank you, Vice-Chancellor, for your commitment and your hospitality.

As on previous occasions, we have listened to the voices of the victims. Above all, the voices of Jewish victims, bearing in mind the specific, singular and unique persecution waged by the Nazis against all European Jews, whom they sought to eliminate and wipe off the face of the earth. We have also recalled the attempted genocide of gipsies and the suffering of Spaniards in the concentration camps.

As on previous occasions, the silence we have shared holds special significance, harbouring many interwoven memories: faces, voices and landscapes. Through these private and individual memories, the full transcendence of the commemoration emerged collectively once again as a bridge between past and present, a point of union and convergence between all victims of Nazi madness and barbarity.

During those moments, some of those present retrieved from the depths of their souls a name, perhaps even a face. To whisper that name, to mention lost loved ones, write their names in our minds when they cannot even by read on the stones of synagogues and memorials is at times the only means left to honour them and afford them burial.

Others among you will have journeyed for the first time along the roads of gipsy remembrance, sung today in Romano, a forgotten and little-known language in Spain. Still others will have remembered and found meaning for the family silences surrounding those who fled, went into exile or were cast out, those who disappeared in camps such as Mauthausen or Buchenwald.

As I mentioned a moment ago, today’s commemoration of Official Holocaust Remembrance Day is the third to be held in this Auditorium.

Two years ago, the presence of their Majesties the King and Queen of Spain and the Prime Minister, accompanied by the country’s most senior authorities, conferred on the ceremony the status of a State Commemoration.

Last year, the commemoration was designed to be a symbolic event of historical reparation, recreating the ties between Spain and its Jewish memory. 14 survivors of the Shoah accompanied us, almost all of them of Spanish-Jewish origin. They were especially moved by their meeting with their Majesties the King and Queen. 500 years after the Jews were expelled, Spain again listened to the old form of Spanish which they have retained as their mother tongue throughout their exiles and diasporas.

The survivors repeated time and time again with particular emotion that they had ‘come home again’. And we all shared that emotion.

Many of the pupils who are here today had the opportunity to hear them speak Judeo-Spanish in their schools. Motivated by the knowledge that they are the last surviving witnesses, all of them wanted to speak and pass on their testimony to Spanish children.

Unfortunately the victims and eyewitnesses of the Holocaust are disappearing, due to the law of life. That is why, in this third commemoration ceremony, we want to pass on the baton to you, the young people, because you will be the ones to light the flame of remembrance tomorrow.

We wanted to have groups of pupils from Spanish schools here in the ceremony and we also invited European schools in Madrid, among them the French Lycée, the Italian Institute and the German School. Thank you all for being here. Thank you to the pupils, the parents and the teachers.

The Holocaust is and will remain the most tragic page in Europe’s history. We wanted to be here today with all of you to convey and underline the Europeanness of Holocaust remembrance. To think of Europe is necessarily to think of the Shoah; to think of the Shoah is to think of Europe. The genocide designs of Nazism could have destroyed our continent, yet at the same time awareness of this disaster helped Europe’s people to unite, once the Nazi war criminals had been tried in Nuremberg and other parts of Germany.

Thus, it was possible to build a Europe able to provide greater levels of democracy and respect for human rights, together with a high degree of prosperity, development and social wellbeing.

All Spanish children have been born European citizens. But in order to fully be a European citizen it is important to understand and accept a common history and be sensitive to European memories, to make them ours and share them.

I would like to recall for you - as Spaniards you are also young European citizens - the feelings in our hearts and minds just over 20 years ago when we were bidding to join the European Union.

During those years we were spurred by a strong sentiment of being pro-Europe, a strong desire for Europe. The desire was not just motivated by our ambition to become more prosperous. It was driven even more by our aspiration to share the universal values of human rights, fundamental freedoms, solidarity, equality, the values that build solid and citizen-based democracies. Above all we were fascinated by that Europe which had suffered, which was impoverished under the Nazis and their collaborators, but was reborn. A Europe that successfully achieved reconciliation.

We should learn important lessons from that reconciled Europe that born again from its ashes, drawing energy from its noblest and oldest traditions and thus reweaving the fabric of a broken and bloodied continent.

We wanted to pass the baton on to you today.

You, the young people, will have to light the flame of remembrance tomorrow. We ask you never to forget the reading of the 27 names that represent symbolically the 1.5 million Jewish children who were murdered on European soil. Never forget the men and women who were killed or who died from exhaustion, cold and starvation in the camps. Do not forget the stories of the children who were saved by righteous people, such as Jaime Vendor -who is here today-; the children who managed to escape from an Auschwitz-bound train, among them Simón Gronovski. The children in the ghettoes who, despite a thousand vicissitudes, managed to glean a few potatoes to feed entire families; the children who drew and staged plays in the Terezi’n camp and who carried on singing when boarding the trains. The older brother who kept a piece of bread for his younger sibling and managed to save him…

In short, what we must always remember from all this is that solidarity in hell enabled them to continue to be human beings. The solidarity of the righteous saved humanity, symbolically. Europe was reborn and is, today, the hope of the world.