Find the full speech of François Heilbronn, vice president of the Memorial, delivered at 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

SPEECH – UNESCO – JANUARY 22, 2020

François Heilbronn, vice-president of the Shoah Memorial

Madam 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 Shoah,

Ladies and gentlemen

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

On 17 and 18 January they had taken with them to the snowy roads, in polar temperatures of -20 °C, more than 70,000 Jewish deportees without strength, malnourished, wounded who had miraculously survived until then.

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

The writer Primo Levi, one of those who stayed at the camp, wrote in "Si c'est un homme" on January 17:

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

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

The barked orders, the howls in the night, the barking of dogs, the endless calls, the squealing of trains, the cries of mothers and children who have been torn off, the crackling of the ovens had become silent.

The Nazi executioners, in their cowardly escape, left behind the largest killing plant ever designed and operated by man.

960,000 Jews, men, women, children, infants, and elderly 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 per family.

On 27 January 1945, the date chosen for the commemorations of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Soviets discovered Birkenau.

They discovered him, but did not release him.

Here is how Primo Levi notes their arrival:

«January 27. The Russians arrived while Charles and I were transporting Somorgyi some distance away. He was very light. We reversed the stretcher 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.

Then I 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."

Those 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 can be visionaries, wrote in his prose preface in 1942:

«But when you tread 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, too, had a scarred face
through anger, through pity and joy,
a man’s face, quite simply!”

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

Remember, as Fondane tells us, "these men’s faces, quite simply."

Think of the six million Jews murdered throughout Europe by Germans and their accomplices in every country.

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.

Genocides were the lot of this murderous century, of this deadly twentieth century.

What about our twenty-first century?

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 Rohingyas in Burma, the mass internment of

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

But here, in this United Nations hall of the most beautiful of human activities, education, science and culture, let me hope.

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

To testify, teach, train, collect and provide 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 Jewish survivors of the camps. This exhibition is called "The voice of 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 transmit but above all to fight.

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

And this murderous anti-Semitic hatred is unfortunately still present among us, right here in France, 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 IFOP commissioned by FONDAPOL and the AJC. 70% of French Jews report having been the victim of at least one anti-Semitic act during their life and this figure rises to 84% for those between 18 and 24 years old, 39% of whom report a physical assault.

Four out of ten young French Jews have therefore been the victim of an anti-Semitic physical assault. Terrifying figure that says the urgency of the fight against this polymorphous and murderous anti-Semitic 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 75,568 Jews deported from France.

In the luminous stone of Jerusalem are engraved the names, surnames, 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 are 65 meters long and over three meters high.

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

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

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

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

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

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