I have survived. And as a survivor I am a witness. If this survival, of the horrors that are summoned up today in the term HOLOCAUST, is to have had any purpose, then it is above all that of keeping awake the memory of the unimaginable, to prevent forgetting and repression and to build all this into the vision of a better future, where such things or anything like them can never happen again anywhere in this world. We survivors are grateful to the fate that allowed today's act of remembrance to take place and that the crimes of National Socialism committed half a century ago did not fall into oblivion. I commemorate the victims of the unconceivable mass murder that struck down my mother, my wife's mother, our relatives, my friends, my colleagues, my fellow inmates of various camps where we were imprisoned together, and last but not least the fellow inmates of the so-called Russian camp of Mauthausen, who were with me in the death block of Hut 6. I remember as if it were yesterday, the moment we heard the call: "They are coming!". It was the Americans. Those of us who had still the strength dragged themselves out of the hut in order to watch the American tank coming. We were too weak to get any closer. Many of my comrades died at that very moment or some hours later - whether they were conscious of their liberation and the collapse of National Socialism, no one can say. Let us now mourn for those who spent their last hours here fifty years ago. National Socialism, which wanted to rule and enslave the world, consisted de facto of a combination of hatred and technology. Hatred is a terrible thing. It was hatred that led the way for the million fold National Socialist crimes. We must despise those crimes, not only because they slaughtered our families, but also because they trampled human dignity underfoot and therefore also the dignity of God - who made man in his own image. The world underestimated Hitler and the National Socialist regime for far too long - this misjudgement had tragic consequences. There are always temptations to do wrong, even in such an open, such a free society as we have in Austria. The more we keep remembering all history with no restrictions, the easier it will be for us to withstand such temptation and to build an ethically viable future. If we were to forget, repress or falsify what happened, our past would return to us over and over again, unvanquished, and would prevent us and our descendants from building our future, in a way that is right and worthy of man. I say this to you as someone who survived the death block
of Mauthausen as by a miracle. © Simon Wiesenthal |
