“Connecting Law and Memory, Mechelen”
Dear Mr Deboutte
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure to be with you today and a very welcome opportunity to exchange views with the many distinguished experts here. It is never easy to speak after the practitioners.
The European Union is the very product of learning from our history. Remembrance and memory stand at its very core. Europe’s striving for peace evolved not out of a vacuum, but out of the ashes of the Second World War and out of the Shoah. The European project was the answer to the deepest fall that our European civilization has ever suffered and remembrance is thus not an option, it is an obligation.
While the memory of past crimes and law enforcement are very much a national competence, which reflects the various histories among Member States, the European Union can – and I would add – has the duty to play an important role in keeping memory alive.
In December 2010, the Commission adopted a Report on the Memory of the crimes committed by totalitarian regimes in Europe [which has been endorsed by the Council in June 2011]. In this Report, the Commission noted that all totalitarian regimes resulted in violations of fundamental rights and that keeping the memory of these crimes alive is a collective duty as a sign of tribute and respect for all victims. The report also showed that each Member State has adopted different measures (e.g. justice for victims, justice for perpetrators, fact-finding, symbolic policies, etc.) depending on its specific national circumstances. Even among Member States with similar experiences of totalitarian regimes, the legal instruments, measures and practices adopted may be different as may be the timing for their adoption and implementation.
Issues concerning crimes and other abuses committed under the former communist regimes should remain first and foremost within national competence. Similarly, the way in which the memory of the Second World War and the Shoah is addressed is essentially a national competence.
However, the EU has a number of instruments to facilitate criminal cooperation, support victims, fight hate crime and support programmes on the memory of the past European crimes.
First, that there are a number of possibilities for cooperation on criminal law matters among Member States, which can be used including in the case of the above crimes, in particular in the framework of Eurojust[1].
Second, the EU has adopted a new legal framework in the field of victims’ protection and assistance, the new Victims’ Directive[2], which aims to ensure that victims of all crimes receive appropriate information, support and protection and are able to participate in criminal proceedings. This Directive provides the victims with a broad set of procedural rights, including access to justice, compensation and restoration. Moreover, the Directive ensures that all victims of crime will benefit from an individual assessment of their protection needs.
Third, there is the legal framework to combat racism and xenophobia[3]. We are enforcing this legislation on European level among other to outlaw Holocaust denial inciting to violence; and hate speech as well as hate crime more generally. And we are in the process of opening infringement procedures against member States that do not comply.
Forth, a strategy with concrete measures to prevent and counter radicalisation leading to violent extremism which increasingly targets Jews living in Europe was adopted by the European Commission in June 2016.
Fifth, under the Europe for citizens programme, the Remembrance strand offers every year 4.4 million € to projects that raise awareness of remembrance, our common history, the values of Europe and to commemorate the victims. The “Europe for Citizens” programme 2014-2020[4] includes a significant part dedicated to European Remembrance covering “Nazism leading to the Holocaust, Fascism, Stalinism and totalitarian communism” as well as “other defining moments of recent Europe history”. And under Erasmus+[5], € 400 million are available to develop new policies and projects supporting inclusion and promoting fundamental values with additional € 13 million to support grassroots initiatives. A Council Recommendation to enhance social inclusion and promote Europe’s fundamental values is under way.
Remembrance has always been seen as a key prevention tools and it remains important. But remembrance must always also seek the link to current challenges. As a prominent representative of the Jewish community put it recently – let’s not only talk about dead Jews. In our commemorations and education there must be a clear link to Jewish live in Europe today.
I would like to hear your views on how to ensure the bridge between the understanding of how the Shoah was possible in an originally rather civilized surrounding and the understanding of the varied forms of Antisemitism that we see again today.
Those of you that have been warning European governments since the early 2000er years of rising Antisemitism know that at the time the reaction was often disbelief, denial or silence. Rather than Antisemitism as a source, politicians pointed to hooliganism, the social situation of a perpetrator or an “importation of the Middle East conflict” to Europe, so merely differing political views. But the situation in the Middle East does not justify criminal acts on European citizens and the perpetrators were not after Rolexes and purses of their victims and. They attacked Jews because they were Jews.
Due to the dwindling small Jewish community, too many people have never worked, studied or even talked to a Jew. Particularly this face-to-face contact is able to bring the lessons from history from to past into the present reality of people and our contribution must be to enable this exchange.
Because today in Europe we see once again a sharp increase of Antisemitic attacks. Two incidents per day in France alone, one every day in Berlin. All of us know about the terrorist attacks on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, the Hyper Kasher in Paris and Synagogue in Copenhagen last year. These are only the tip of the iceberg. There is no record of the uncountable times Jews wearing a kippa were spat at in the streets of Europe, the many times that Jewish kids were bullied at school, the antisemitic hate encountered by Jews or Jewish journalists on social media.
When more and more Jewish parents choose to send their kids to Jewish schools, protected by soldiers and behind barbed wire, in order not to expose them to day-to-day bullying, the process of segregation is in full swing.
When over 40 % of Jews in France, Belgium and Hungary consider to leave their homeland, where their families have been rooted for centuries, than the signs are on the wall.
Have we learnt the lesson from our history?
With fewer survivors able to pass on their personal suffering, the risk increases that remembrance is fading away. Only recently, we lost the most vocal defender of perpetuating the memory of the Shoa, Elie Wiesel. With him we don’t only loose a wonderful writer, professor, political activist but most importantly a teacher. Nobody tried as hard to find words for the cruelties. He turned his memory into action; he turned the eternal slogan “Never again” into education and received eventually the Nobel Peace Prize for it. It is our duty to develop new tools to transmit the lessons from the Holocaust and make people immune against Antisemitism and stereotyping.
We need to teach the teachers, help them to dismantle their own biases and equip them for the challenges that come with a multi-ethnic classroom. Also, students need to learn about the Jewish contribution to European culture in a holistic way. At the same time we should ensure that students hear about Judaism not only when it’s about the Holocaust, but when they hear in maths about Einstein, listen to Gustav Mahler or read Thomas Mann.
European Jewish history is not only persecution! The synergies between the Jewish and non-Jewish communities must play a role in education.
This December, the European Commission together with our Israeli counterparts hold the “EU-Israel Seminar on Combating Racism, Xenophobia and Antisemitism” for the 10th consecutive year. Next to combating online hated, the focus will be on education and precisely the question how Holocaust education, Jewish education and face-to-face exchange can form an integral part of multicultural societies.
Building up resilience is also the focus of our internal work in the European Commission. Together with the Institute of the Wannsee conference we organise a training each 27 January for Holocaust Remembrance Day on the role of civil servants in bringing about the Holocaust at the time.
We are also starting for the first time on 9th November a training course for EU officials to identify the various forms of Antisemitism, as well as understand the similarities and differences with other forms of discrimination.
So, the European Commission is attempting to address Remembrance as well as the fight against Antisemitism in a holistic way. We use the various means we have, from legal instruments on hate crime, hate speech, and banning Holocaust denial inciting to violence, to the code of conduct with IT companies, to training for police, judges and prosecutors to education in universities and schools.
Any Antisemitic attack is an attack on our common values and principles, on our understanding of democracy, freedom and equality. Fighting Antisemitism is therefore not a responsibility for Jews alone, but a responsibility for us all, for the whole of society.
Thank you!
[1] http://www.eurojust.europa.eu/Pages/home.aspx
[2] http://ec.europa.eu/justice/criminal/victims/index_en.htm
[3] http://ec.europa.eu/justice/fundamental-rights/racism-xenophobia/framework-decision/index_en.htm
[4] https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/europe-for-citizens/strands/european-remembrance_en
[5] http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/sites/erasmusplus/files/library/fact-sheet-post-paris_en.pdf
