Mr. Chair, I am very honoured to rise in this House to take part in this debate.
Just a few weeks ago, people around the world reflected on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the most notorious sites of the uniquely sadistic, brutal, and unspeakable atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis. They gathered together to recognize and honour the victims and survivors of this horrific and inhumane period of history. I was honoured to be among them to commemorate this most horrific of crimes.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was originally intended as a large concentration camp primarily for members of Polish resistance and intelligentsia, and in 1941-42 it was expanded for what the Germans called “the final solution”, which meant extermination of Jews. Six million men and women, including three million children, were murdered during the Holocaust for the simple fact that they were Jewish. This was what anti-Semitism had led to in supposedly civilized Europe. It was a time of horrendous nightmares.
As the world saw the end of the Second World War nearing, the enormity of the Holocaust began to be exposed through efforts of people like Jan Karski. It is critical that we continue to reflect on history in the modern context. As our Prime Minister said, our memory of the Holocaust and the suffering endured by its victims and their families:
...helps keep strong the conviction in our hearts to do everything we can—through our actions and our words—to stand firm against the forces of intolerance and remain vigilant against genocide. Only through these continued efforts can we ensure that such atrocities never happen again
To put it simply, we must never forget; we must do all we can to prevent another genocide, another Shoah, from occurring. This is the kind of resolution we must make every day and at every opportunity. This is all the more critical at a time when anti-Semitic incidents and Holocaust denial persist around the world.
Seventy years after the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the members, observer countries, and permanent international partners of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance collectively reaffirmed our unqualified support for the Stockholm declaration of 15 years ago and our commitment to remembering and honouring the victims of the Holocaust, to upholding its terrible truth, to standing up against those who would distort or deny it, and to combatting anti-Semitism and racism in all its forms.
It is why we also partner with B'nai Brith Canada to invest in the national task force on Holocaust research, remembrance, and education. The task force brings together scholars, legal experts, educators, Holocaust survivors, and community representatives to further Holocaust research and education in Canada. Canada is at the forefront of the international fight against anti-Semitism. We were the first country to announce its withdrawal from the tainted Durban process at the United Nations because we would not lend the good name of this country to a process supposedly to combat racism, which in fact promoted anti-Semitism.
This is what parliamentarians from around the world declared here in Ottawa four years ago in developing the Ottawa protocol, as we hosted the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism. Among its commitments, the protocol called for leaders of faith groups to combat all forms of hatred and discrimination, including anti-Semitism. It called on governments to establish an international task force to identify and monitor hate on the Internet, to record all hate crimes including anti-Semitism, and to express concern over anti-Semitism on campuses.
The Holocaust was a crime against humanity unlike any other in human history, and it fundamentally altered how the world views and treats acts of genocide.
As more and more survivors can no longer share their stories, we have the moral obligation to teach future generations about the horrors of Shoah and to draw lessons from this dark chapter in history, in order to prevent it from ever being repeated.