David Hatchwell, president of the Jewish community in Madrid delivered a hard-hitting, direct speech, which left the representatives of the municipal executive behind.
David Hatchwell, president of the Jewish community in Madrid:
“Authorities, dear friends,
Nobel laureate Eliezer Wiesel, in his work Night, tried to explain the extent of the annihilating zeal of the Nazi machinery by saying: “The war that Hitler and his accomplices carried out was not only against the Jews – men, women and children – but also against the Jewish religion, against the Jewish tradition and, therefore, against the Jewish memory “.
Today, 72 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camps, we remember and honor the more than 6 million Jewish people massacred. Among the victims, we remember today more than a million and a half children, kidnapped and killed for the simple fact of being Jewish children. Our memory should always include the hundreds of thousands of gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people and political dissidents, including the Spanish republicans. All of them, our brothers in suffering.
This terrible crime perpetrated for seven long years in the heart of a supposedly civilized Europe occurred in the light of day and under the silent gaze of the West.
Today, the just few among nations and countries like Denmark, Albania, Bulgaria or Finland deserve to be remembered, who made extraordinary efforts to protect their Jewish communities. We must remember all these allied nations, who sacrificed their youth to overthrow the beast of the Third Reich.
Our duty of memory requires us all to remember the greatest crime that has happened in the history of all mankind. Remembering the shoa is to work on the humanization of the human being. We must educate about the importance of freedom, transparency, independence of justice and respect for the difference of the other. We believed that with the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, Europe and the rest of the world would have been freed from anti-Semitism. It is not like this. Unfortunately the lesson has not been learned. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Arab countries today are still intoxicated by antisemitism rooted in everything Jewish and, of course, the only Jewish State, the State of Israel.
Also, in the last years, we are living in the western world and especially in Spain, a despicable wave of campaigns inciting to boycott to Israel, the Jew between the nations. These boycott campaigns, such as the BDS, are disguised as humanitarian political speeches of alleged propalestine support, but they are nothing more than new forms of anti-Semitism. Let us not confuse ourselves, behind them is the same ideology of hatred that only 80 years ago wanted to exclude the Jews from the face of the earth. Modern anti-Zionism is the acceptable anti-Semitism of the Europe of old, that double standard that applies to the Jews and to Israel is good proof of it.
The anti-Semitism that springs from social networks, social gatherings and extreme right-wing speeches, and above all from a radical, ignorant left, is not only a problem of the Jews, it is the metric of the pathology of intolerance in a Society, is a warning sign against racism, xenophobia, homophobia, discrimination and hatred of the different. Today, too, I would like to denounce here theocratic fanatical regimes like the Iranian, who proclaim Judeophobic hatred; Deny the shoa while threatening and preparing to commit a nuclear genocide of the same characteristics. I mean loud and clear today that it is not acceptable to ride a regime with Nazi intentions.
That hatred we also see today when the soulless of the Islamic State kidnap, rape, torture and murder other human beings in Africa, in the Middle East; Christians, animists, hosexuales and yazidíes and other minorities. Today they are suffering massive mass murders before the shameful silence of the planet.
The only way we can fight against intolerance is through the commitment of our political leaders; Through the monitoring of codes of conduct by our media; Through legal reforms to be able to act effectively against the incitement to hatred as well as the banalization and denial of the shoa; Through a better understanding of the shoa and its universal meaning through greater inclusion in educational programs. And also through a greater knowledge of the Jewish legacy in Spain as well as of the reality of the modern Jews of the State of Israel.
Also, in the last years, we are living in the western world and especially in Spain, a despicable wave of campaigns inciting to boycott to Israel, the Jew between the nations. These boycott campaigns, such as the BDS, are disguised as humanitarian political speeches of alleged propalestine support, but they are nothing more than new forms of anti-Semitism. Let us not confuse ourselves, behind them is the same ideology of hatred that only 80 years ago wanted to exclude the Jews from the face of the earth. Modern anti-Zionism is the acceptable anti-Semitism of the Europe of old, that double standard that applies to the Jews and to Israel is good proof of it.
The anti-Semitism that springs from social networks, social gatherings and extreme right-wing speeches, and above all from a radical, ignorant left, is not only a problem of the Jews, it is the metric of the pathology of intolerance in a Society, is a warning sign against racism, xenophobia, homophobia, discrimination and hatred of the different. Today, too, I would like to denounce here theocratic fanatical regimes like the Iranian, who proclaim Judeophobic hatred; Deny the shoa while threatening and preparing to commit a nuclear genocide of the same characteristics. I mean loud and clear today that it is not acceptable to ride a regime with Nazi intentions.
That hatred we also see today when the soulless of the Islamic State kidnap, rape, torture and murder other human beings in Africa, in the Middle East; Christians, animists, homosexuals and yazidis and other minorities. Today they are suffering massive mass murders before the shameful silence of the planet.
The only way we can fight against intolerance is through the commitment of our political leaders; Through the monitoring of codes of conduct by our media; Through legal reforms to be able to act effectively against the incitement to hatred as well as the banalization and denial of the shoa; Through a better understanding of the shoa and its universal meaning through greater inclusion in educational programs. And also through a greater knowledge of the Jewish legacy in Spain as well as of the reality of the modern Jews of the State of Israel.
The Jews of Madrid will continue to make efforts to get to know us better and for Madrid to remain an example of exemplary coexistence based on respect for the other, where we are never indifferent to suffering.
Thank you very much”.