Find the full speech of François Heilbronn, vice president of the Memorial, delivered during the ceremony organized by UNESCO on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the discovery of the camps

International Day dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust

SPEECHES – UNESCO – 22 JANUARY 2020

François Heilbronn, Vice-President of the Shoah Memorial

Madam the Director General of UNESCO, dear Audrey Azoulay,

Madam Vice-President of the Bundestag, Mrs. Claudia Roth,

Rabbi Olivier Kaufman,

Ladies and gentlemen, the survivors of the Holocaust,

Ladies and gentlemen

75 years ago, on this very day, in the early morning of January 22, 1945, the last executioners, the last guards left the camp of Auschwitz II, said Birkenau.

On January 17 and 18, they had led with them on the snowy roads, by polar temperatures of -20°C, more than 70,000 powerless, malnourished, wounded Jewish deportees who had miraculously survived until then.

They abandoned without heating and food nearly 7,000 sick people, too weak to leave. The Soviets were 100km away, the cannons rumbled.

The writer Primo Levi, one of those who stayed at the camp, writes in "If it’s a man" on the date of January 17:

" At the moment when the great machine of the Lager was definitively extinguished, began for us ten days out of the world and out of time".

It was 75 years ago, on January 22, the last SS had fled. Auschwitz-Birkenau no longer had guards.

The barked orders, the howls in the night, the barking of dogs, the endless calls, the screeching of trains, the cries of mothers and children who are dragged away, the crackling of ovens had become silent.

The Nazi executioners, in their flight of cowards, left behind them the largest killing factory ever designed and operated by man.

960,000 Jews, men, women, children, infants, old people from all over Europe, including nearly 70,000 Jews from France, including twelve members of my family, were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 20,000 Gypsies were also gassed there per whole family.

On January 27, 1945, the date chosen for the commemorations of the International Day dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, the Soviets discovered Birkenau.

They discovered him, they did not release him.

Here is how Primo Levi notes their arrival:

'January 27. The Russians arrived as Charles and I were transporting Somorgyi a few miles away. He was very light. We reversed the trolley on the gray snow.”

I always look up to the clouds of Auschwitz-Birkenau, like this last Sunday when with the Shoah Memorial we accompanied Anne Hidalgo, the Council of Paris and some mayors of the arrondissements of Paris.

I then think of Paul Celan’s poem, 'Fugue de mort' written in 1945 and these verses:

"Your smoke will rise to the sky.

You will have your grave in the clouds

These clouds of Auschwitz where more than a million of our Jewish and Gypsy brothers and sisters have been resting for 75 years.

It is this million graves in the clouds, in the sky of Auschwitz that compels us.
Another great poet, Benjamin Fondane, as only poets know how to be visionaries, wrote in his prose preface in 1942:

'But when you walk this bouquet of nettles
who had been me, in another century,
in a story that will be outdated for you,
just remember that I was innocent
and that, just like you, mortals of that day,
I had also had a marked face
by anger, by pity and joy,
a man’s face, simply!”

Three days ago, we surely walked under the snow this bouquet of nettles that had been Fondane, gassed in Birkenau in October 1944.

Remember, as Fondane enjoins us to do, "these men’s faces, quite simply."

Think of the six million Jews murdered throughout Europe by the Germans and their accomplices from all countries.

Think of those six million murdered Jews whose only crime was being born Jewish.

Think of the million and a half Armenians murdered by the Turks.

Think of the more than 200,000 Gypsies murdered by the Nazis.

Think of the million Tutsis murdered by the Hutus.

The genocides were the lot of this assassin century, of this deadly twentieth century.

And our 21st century then?

It started the twenty-first century badly, with its mass crimes, such as the massacre of Yazidis by radical Islamists, these mass murders against the Rohingya in Burma, the mass internment of

Uyghurs in camps in China, by endless massacres of the Great Lakes region and in Darfur, by massacres of civilians with chemical weapons in Syria, by massacres of Kurds.

But here in this United Nations forum dedicated to the most beautiful of human activities, education, science and culture, allow me to hope.

To hope in truth, justice and altruism through education, science and culture.
These are our essential missions at the Shoah Memorial. It has been our unwavering commitment since our creation in the very heart of the Nazi winter in Grenoble in 1943.

Testifying, teaching, training, gathering and providing evidence of all crimes is our mission.

This Sunday, January 26, we will inaugurate a new exhibition and a series of conferences dedicated to the testimonies of the Jewish survivors of the camps. This exhibition is called 'The voice of the witnesses'.

I would like, on behalf of all of you, to greet very affectionately our friends, so courageous, miraculously rescued from the death camps, present among us this evening, and who 75 years later are still here to say the unspeakable, to convey but above all to fight.

Fighting hatred of the Other. Of the Jew, the Armenian, the Tutsi, the Gypsy, the Yezidi, the Rohingya, the Uyghur, the Kurd, the Darfuri and so many others alas.

And this murderous anti-Semitic hatred is unfortunately still there among us, here in France itself, where since 2003, twelve Jews have been murdered by fanatical Islamists for the simple fact of being Jewish.

Yesterday in France, a terrible poll was published by the IFOP commissioned by FONDAPOL and the AJC. 70% of French Jews report having been the victim of at least one antisemitic act during their life and this figure rises to 84% for those aged between 18 and 24 years, 39% of whom report a physical assault.

4 young French Jews in 10 have therefore been victims of an antisemitic physical assault. Terrifying figure that says the urgency of the fight against this polymorphous and murderous antisemitic hatred that is developing in our societies.

Monday, January 27, on this symbolic day, the President of the French Republic, Mr. Emmanuel Macron will inaugurate the renovated and completed Wall of Names, of the 75,568 Jews deported from France.

In the luminous stone of Jerusalem are engraved the first names, names and dates of birth of those who almost all went to 'dig their graves in the clouds'

This wall, these tombstones of our martyrs are proof of the crime, the genocide of the Jews.

These walls measure 65 meters long and over three meters high.

If we were to engrave on a wall the names of the 6 million Jews murdered in Europe, this wall would measure more than 5 kilometers. This wall would thus cover the distance that separates UNESCO in Paris from the Shoah Memorial near the City Hall of Paris.

It is therefore through education, the teaching of history, that we will make hatred recede, all hatred.

This is our mission at the Shoah Memorial where each year we teach more than 100,000 students, we train more than 6,000 teachers to understand genocidal processes, to fight against denial, conspiracy theories and all racist and anti-Semitic hatreds.

We are happy that the United Nations and UNESCO for 14 years have been committed to this fight for truth, education and justice.

We are grateful to Mrs. Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, for having also launched programs against antisemitism, which is becoming virulent in too many countries, including France. It is also the fight for the Shoah Memorial.

Through teaching and its demand for truth against all negationisms, we will build for our children a world where this "face of man simply" will also be ours.