The Embassy Marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Ambassador Eisen standing in front of Barrack 26 in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

On Friday, January 27, we mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the liberation of the death camp of  Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945. Here you can read a commentary on the Holocaust by Ambassador Norman Eisen that was published in Mlada Fronta Dnes newspaper on December 1, 2011. 

Ambassador Eisen Op-Ed in Mlada Fronta Dnes

I recently visited the Auschwitz concentration camp for the first time.  As the United States Ambassador to the Czech Republic, I felt bound to pay my respects to the approximately 250,000 citizens of the former Czechoslovakia who were murdered there. My grandparents and many members of my immediately family also perished in Auschwitz. I had long wanted to honor their memory with a pilgrimage to the death camp.

The enormity of Auschwitz and the evil perpetrated there forces visitors to confront their most basic beliefs.  “How did the heirs to some of the world’s greatest civilizations allow this to happen?” and “where was the world’s conscience?” are just two of many questions I asked myself repeatedly while touring the facility in which two million people were brutally killed.

All of these questions have complex answers.  Many ranking Nazis had arrest records before 1933, and were viewed by the Nazi Party as having the kind of skills necessary to advance the goals of the Third Reich. Others were willing to do whatever was asked of them (or carry out whatever they were told to do) in order to profit or advance their careers.  The majority of Nazis and their sympathizers were pursuing thousand year-old religious and ethnic hatreds. Some civilians stayed silent, or preferred not to believe the barbarities in their midst, fearing that the consequences of speaking out would lead to their deaths and the destruction of their families.

What I saw at Auschwitz affirmed my long-held view that the democratic nations of Europe have a special responsibility to protect the rights of religious and ethnic minorities, both at home and abroad.

Religious freedom and tolerance of opposing points of view are some of the key reasons Western Europe has enjoyed the world’s highest standard of living for the past several decades. The foresighted Americans and Europeans who rebuilt the war-torn nations of this continent wisely insisted that freedom, tolerance, human rights, and the rule of law must be the principles that would guide Europe through the latter half of the 20th Century.  These same tenets shall continue to underlie what we stand for in the 21st Century, and beyond.

Exacting human rights standards permit democracies to survive periods of stress, in which demagogues seek to use political or economic crises to advance personal ambitions or inter-religious and inter-ethnic discord, sometimes subverting the political order.  I believe that prevailing over tyranny and authoritarianism by adhering to the rule of law has been one of the great lessons learned both in the wake of the Second World War and from the scourge of the communist-controlled governments in Central and Eastern Europe.

Then, as now, the United States and Europe have critical roles to play.  We should recognize minorities as a source of strength in our societies.  The United States is working to build a society in which religious and ethnic affiliation play no role in determining an individual's enjoyment of life, his or her status, or quality of life.  Nothing better exemplifies America’s promise than the election of President Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and an American mother of European ancestry.

Not long ago, the people of the Czech Republic remembered the 70th anniversary of the installation of Reinhard Heydrich as the “Protector” of Bohemia and Moravia. I saw the work of this key architect of the Holocaust during my visit to Auschwitz. The people of the Czech Republic, among others, suffered deeply during the Second World War.  It is only by combating intolerance against minorities of all kinds that we can ensure the abominations of the past will not be repeated in the future.