Welcoming address by Member of the European Parliament Gunnar Hökmark, chairman of the European Alliance for Holocaust Survivors, at the conference “Unfinished Justice: Restitution and remembrance” in the European Parliament, Brussels the 26th of April 2017
Survivors, Yours excellences, Members of European Parliament, Ladies and Gentlemen,
On behalf of me and my co-host Charles Goerens I would like to welcome you all to this conference here in the European Parliament, in the center of Europe, which is taking place in order to call for justice to all those who lost their lives, to all those who lost their families, their future, their identity and their rights during the most terrible and brutal times in the modern European history. The Holocaust survivors. I would like to pay a special tribute to you, the survivors participating in this conference.
You are heroes; you represent the truth and the most traumatic parts of our modern history, atrocities so brutal and so inhuman that it is difficult for us to understand how they could take place in our Europe, not far away neither in time nor in room.
You are the tellers of truth, by your history, by your lives, by your existence, by your memories and by our memories of you and so many others, far stronger than any fake news or alternative facts.
We have arranged this conference in order to call for justice. To call for restitution. Because by doing right today we are honoring the lives of millions Europeans, Jews and others, who were living in a Europe where they shouldn’t have had any reason to fear for their lives and for the safety of their families.
But they and all other decent Europeans were wrong. The brutality of evilness without any borders wiped away human lives and dignity as well as the civilization and humanity of the European society. Without any borders across the borders of Europa.
The European society failed. European states failed in upholding the most fundamental rules of a civilized society. European citizens failed. Europe failed. The lives that were sacrificed cannot be restored. Individuals can’t be restituted. But recognizing and respecting their rights to the property that were theirs, the identities of those who lost their lives in the Holocaust can be restituted. Now 2017, more than 70 years after the WW II, and after the terrible truth of the concentration camps is the final countdown to right the wrongs regarding property.
We call upon European governments to initiate and implement the restitution of Jewish property during the Holocaust. We call upon parliamentarians in all those countries where properties in barbarian way were stolen from Jewish citizens to act. We call upon European media and European historians, together with the very many judicial institutions of our continent, to define what needs to be done in every country and to call for action. Now is the time for the restitution of our history.
Restitution of property is about more than the property. It is the restitution of justice, of fairness and of human decency. It is the restitution of morale and of the rule of law that is the fundament of every human civilization. It is the restitution of all the identities, and their rights, of those who lost their lives in the darkest time of European history. In a time when some make politics by questioning that the atrocities took place restitution is a way to once and for all use the truth as a point of departure for the future by righting the wrongs.
It is about the final restitution of the Europe that was lost because of a crime against humanity, Europe that now must be regained. I am together with my co-host Charles Goerens proud to host this conference and to welcome you to this European house. Please be welcome!