23/01/2008 Session
This Sunday, we will remember the 63rd anniversary of the liberation of . This concentration camp is a symbol of how the extermination of human beings was brought to perverted perfection.
The murder of millions of people because of their Jewish or other ethnic origin, their religious beliefs, their political views or sexual orientation illustrates the darkest period of our history.
There are fewer and fewer people among us who survived this terror and who could describe and explain to us the actual incomprehensible.
It is of greater importance than ever to keep their memories alive, to remember and to teach our children what happened in the heart of .
Therefore, we must pay particular attention to uprising anti-Semitism and xenophobia in the Council of Europe’s member states. We must not accept that fundamental human rights and freedoms are violated anywhere in . This organisation was established to ensure that totalitarian regimes and their racist ideas will never find a possibility to seed the evil in again.
May the fate of millions of murdered Europeans never be forgotten, may their suffering be our constant motivation to make a better place in the world.