Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak briefly of why today we memorialize the Holocaust.
We do so, first, to honour and to remember the six million who died in the Holocaust: those who died in the camps, those who died fighting in the Warsaw ghetto, and those who died in so many other places.
Second, we memorialize the Holocaust to comfort those who survive, but who will bear the scars of what happened to them on their hearts as clearly as some of the survivors bear the tattoos of the concentration camps on their skin.
Third, we do so to honour the righteous gentiles, some of whose names are familiar to us, such as Sukahara, Schindler and Wallenberg, but also the many others who, at risk to themselves, undertook to save and protect the Jews who were their neighbours and friends and also to protect the values of the civilization that is so important to us.
Fourth, and this is the main point, we do so to ensure that the words “never again” have some meaning, because in the past half-century, the past 60 years, quite frankly, never again has become again and again. Every time a suicide bomber kills innocent civilians, our civilization is forgetting never again. Every time in the past 60 years that a government has terrorized its own citizens we are forgetting as a civilization that phrase never again. Every time an invader slaughters the innocents of the country it seeks to control, we are forgetting those words never again.
It is our duty as the Parliament of a great and civilized nation to ensure that the words “never again” are inscribed in our hearts every bit as much as words can be inscribed in stone, every bit as much as these words must go on in our civilization in the future.