Mr. Speaker, this year's national Holocaust Remembrance Day takes place at a historic moment of remembrance and reminder.
This year is the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the surviving remnants of planet Auschwitz, the most horrific laboratory of mass murder in history. It is the 65th anniversary of the emergence of the United Nations from the ashes of the Holocaust, reminding us, as Kofi Annan put it, that “a United Nations that fails to be at the forefront of the fight against anti-Semitism and other forms of racism denies its history and undermines its future”. It is the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg race laws, reminding us of the dangers of state-sanctioned cultures of hate, of incitement and of indifference and silence in the face of radical evil. And it is the 65th anniversary of the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg, this Saint-Just of the nations, who showed that one person could confront evil, resist and prevail, and thereby transform history.
Let us pledge that never again will we be indifferent to incitement and hate, that never again will we be silent in the face of radical evil, that never again will we indulge racism and anti-Semitism, and that never again will we ignore mass atrocity and impunity. Jamais plus.