In 2005, the United Nations designated January 27th as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, an annual occasion to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. The date was chosen to coincide with the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Nazi Germany’s principal and most notorious concentration and extermination camp. Over one million Jewish people were systematically murdered at Auschwitz. The scale and intent of this destruction is impossible to comprehend.
Today, people across the world gather to remember the victims of the Holocaust – the six million people who were imprisoned, tortured and killed, simply for being Jewish. It is a moment of deep resonance for all Jewish people, particularly those whose family histories intersect brutally with the Holocaust. We also remember the many other victims of the Nazi regime: including those targeted and killed for being Roma, for having nonconforming religious beliefs, for their cultural or ethnic identity, sexual orientation, disability status, or for their political beliefs.
In the most extreme terms, the Holocaust revealed the consequences of disregarding human dignity and equality, and the dangers of ignoring our common humanity by designating people as being somehow “other” or less than human. International Holocaust Remembrance Day brings these lessons into focus and, sadly, we continue to need the reminder. Anti-Semitism is again on the rise across Europe and further afield. Hateful online rhetoric, including misinformation, is employed to scapegoat minorities.
This year’s commemoration has additional significance, as it marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. I, along with many other heads of state and governments, will be in Auschwitz today to pay my respects and listen to the testimony of survivors.
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Inevitably, we are approaching a time when the experiences of the Holocaust will no longer be a part of living memory. This prompts the question of what we can do to honour the victims and keep the voices of survivors alive.
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Of most importance, we must actively remember. In 2023, I was privileged to visit the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem, to lay a wreath in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. Yad Vashem also celebrates the moral courage of individuals who sought to protect Jewish people from persecution at great personal cost, including Mary Elmes, an Irish humanitarian who protected 200 Jewish children. Ireland also supports the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, to help ensure that it remains a permanent site for remembrance into the future.
These places have a unique role in commemorating victims, furthering our education, and preserving the reality of the Holocaust. They also capture some of the emotional magnitude of the suffering which was inflicted, and whose memory is still present among today’s Jewish communities everywhere.
Eighty years on from the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, it is imperative for all of us – individuals, groups, nations big and small – to continue to recall and commemorate the horror of the Holocaust
Remembrance also lives closer to home. Each year, on the Sunday in January closest to Holocaust Remembrance Day, Ireland commemorates the Holocaust in a solemn ceremony recalling the victims and honouring the survivors. Ireland’s stolpersteines (or stumbling stones) outside St Catherine’s National School, Dublin, provide a moving tribute to Irish victims of the Holocaust – Ettie Steinberg Gluck, Wojteck Gluck, Leon Gluck, Isaac Shishi, and Ephraim and Jeanne Saks.
Their stories remind us to ensure that Ireland remains a welcoming and safe place for all those fleeing persecution, and that anti-Semitism in all forms is unacceptable. Ireland and Irish people are rightly known for warmth, hospitality and decency. There is no place here for hatred, bigotry, racism or prejudice of any kind. We must also recall that many states, including our own, did not do enough to accept Jewish refugees when it might still have been possible to save some lives amid the Holocaust.
Recently, I confirmed Ireland’s endorsement of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism and the “Global Guidelines for Countering Antisemitism”. These measures complement Ireland’s existing anti-discrimination frameworks, and strengthen our long-standing commitment to protecting freedom of religion or belief. Anti-Semitism is increasing across the world. The data shows this, and our Jewish communities are telling us this. We must be clear-eyed and we must listen. We must act.
Finally, we need to ensure that human rights and rule of law remain at the centre of everything that we do. The legacy of the Holocaust and the second World War, in many ways, shaped the creation of our international system, as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity were encoded in law for the first time, in response to the systematic cruelty and intentional suffering waged against civilians, including the attempted destruction of the Jews and the Roma as entire populations.
By upholding international law, including international human rights law, we ensure the lessons of the second World War endure. It is incumbent on us to call out violations wherever these occur and to promote accountability. For this reason, human rights has been, and will remain, at the core of Ireland’s foreign policy.
Eighty years on from the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, it is imperative for all of us – individuals, groups, nations big and small – to continue to recall and commemorate the horror of the Holocaust. And we must work together to sustain the vision which the men and women who wrote the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights left to us. A world which recognises, as the preamble of the universal declaration reminds us, that “disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind”.
For this reason, as we mark this most solemn occasion for remembrance, and to honour the testimony of the survivors, we will continue to champion human rights and the rule of law, which in the end are the only guarantee for humanity that “Never Again” is truly “Never Again”.
Micheál Martin TD is Taoiseach
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