On Sunday – on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau – the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, delivered the keynote address at the National Holocaust Memorial Day Commemoration at the Mansion House in Dublin.

There was controversy ahead of the event, as the outgoing Israeli ambassador to Ireland, Dana Erlich, called for the President not to attend the commemoration – claiming that Higgins had helped foster an "anti-Israeli atmosphere" in the country. A statement from Áras an Uachtaráin noted that the President "has again and again strongly condemned antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism" throughout his career. 

Various news outlets have reported that a number of people protesting the President's keynote address – which directly referenced Gaza and the "horrific loss of life and destruction" that has occurred since October 7 – either walked out or were removed from Sunday's event.

Tánaiste Simon Harris has since defended the President for "rightly mentioning the situation in the Middle East", in his speech, "but also calling very much for hostages to be released."

Speech by President Michael D. Higgins
National Holocaust Memorial Day Commemoration
Round Room, Mansion House
3pm, Sunday, 26th January 2025

Today is a significant National Holocaust Memorial Day, taking place, as it does, on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of what were a network of Nazi concentration camps. May I thank Professor Thomas O’Dowd, Chairperson of Holocaust Education Ireland, for the invitation to be part of this ceremony with you.

May I say what an honour it is once more on this Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 to have Holocaust survivors Suzi Diamond and Tomi Reichental with us.

“To remember, in the moral sense required here, we need some informed awareness of the range of horror in number and kind of victims, as detailed in the many excellent histories; but we perhaps need even more to share the sense of intense suffering conveyed by the witness of the victims and the survivors”.

That was how Professor Enda McDonagh put it at one of the earliest papers he gave on human rights. He saw in the public reaction to the opening of the gates at Auschwitz-Birkenau a huge influence on the development and possibilities of human rights.

In communal memory there are foundational spaces. The Holocaust is such a space, important for all of humanity, of special significance to the relatives and those of a shared faith, of those it sought to genocidally eliminate.

What people could see at the opening of the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau was not only the dead, the emaciated. They were confronted with the consequences of something that had a complex design and history, a cruelty aimed at the extermination of the Jewish population of Europe and the objects of life that were their intimacies, that they had brought with them, and with them were included other categories – the disabled, Romani, those of same-sexual orientation – all defined as an ‘Other’ to be eliminated.

It is important that each generation allows itself to be moved by the range of intimacies that are revealed in the details of the objects that have been preserved at former concentration camps which I saw myself at Auschwitz-Birkenau when I visited in 2020 to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation with fellow Heads of State.

It is important that all in each generation and political leaders are made acutely aware of not just the consequences of an attempted genocide, but of the complicit actions of silence, of the averted gaze, of those who, by their culpable indifference, allowed the Holocaust to be planned, prepared and to occur, and of course there were those who refused to respond to the desperate pleas of those who were seeking refuge from it.

So may I suggest that the role of education in ethical remembrance of the Holocaust is of immense importance. It is education in all its diverse and emancipatory forms that can play a critical role in ensuring not only that an atrocity like the Holocaust never happens again, but that a basis for building a peaceful future can be made possible.

That is why the work of Holocaust Education Ireland is so important, playing, as it does, a crucial role in ensuring that Ireland abides by its commitments under the 2000 Stockholm Declaration to counter antisemitism, Holocaust denial, distortion of the Holocaust facts, and xenophobia and racism in its many insidious guises through the provision of accurate, comprehensive information about prejudice, discrimination, hate speech and misinformation.

Such important work as HEI does ensures that factual and historical accuracy, inclusivity and respect for all people, human dignity and human rights are values that we must strive to uphold and promote in our contemporary conditions.

We must ensure that every generation understands how the horrors of the Holocaust came to be, and we must draw from what that teaches us, 80 years on. Described by so many writers as the nadir of basic human thought and action to which humanity can sink, it must be addressed how such dehumanisation came to be so effective, institutionally facilitated, and with such little resistance. There are those who, at its emergence, even went so far as to welcome its authoritarian assumptions offered behind a mask of ensuring order, be they politicians or newspapers editors across Europe.

One of the earliest lectures I attended on the origins of the human-rights movement was that of the late Enda McDonagh to whom I have already referred. He took the Holocaust as a departure point for what he hoped would be a catalyst for human rights and a shared purpose for their vindication. He would later write about the amorality of indifference or silence in relation to human-rights breaches.

Those who attend Holocaust Memorial Day each year understand and appreciate the significance of the bravery and courage of those who, having suffered a great loss, are carrying a deep wound and yet are seeking to reach beyond this pain, encouraging us all to strive for a definition of the ‘Other’ that respects our essential humanity, has respect for a diversity of experiences, ethnicity or the differing foundations in aspects of collective memory which have to be taken into account.

If we are to achieve an enduring peace and a life together that would reward such efforts, it will require us to meet the human-rights requirements of which Professor McDonagh spoke – the right to security but also the vindication of redress and participation rights in society, in their fullest sense.

Regrettably, this important and challenging task of confronting those historical and contextual circumstances that permitted the Holocaust is again needed. We live in times when it seems acceptable by some to employ hatred of the ‘Other’ as a rhetorical tool, to use hate speech openly, be it in public or online, thus fanning the flames of intolerance and bigotry, promoting difference as a source of fear.

We live in a world that is enduring a period of rising political authoritarianism, polarisation, and violence. Such an atmosphere threatens democracy, promotes racism, division and exclusion. For far too many, the averting of one’s gaze is now seen as an acceptable indifference. It is as if the best of aspirations for a cohesive world in conditions of change are being perceived as a lost cause, even an obstacle.

We now live once again in a period in which war is hegemonic in the discourse, suggestive as this is of the impotence of an informed diplomacy or meaningful negotiations that would seek to understand the history and the assumptions of an adversary.

Rather than a concerted effort to build a mind of war, what humanity needs now is the building of a mind of peace. It will be difficult work, but we must co-operate to envisage and deliver peace.

We are given examples in such a task by those such as Israeli peace activist Maoz Inon and Palestinian peace activist Aziz Abu Sarah who, while each carrying a near-unbearable grief of loss, are asking us to listen to each other, to reconcile our divided narratives, and through such a mutual recognition as can deliver a shared, peaceful future.

As Maoz Inon puts it:

“We must forgive for the past. We must forgive for the present. But we must not and should not forgive for the future”.

Or in the words of Aziz Abu Sarah:

“We must not let anger drown us in hate and vengeance”.

Holocaust Memorial Day presents an important opportunity to ensure that the message which the Holocaust teaches us must never be lost with the passage of time, as Primo Levi feared, that neither must we be dilatory in promoting and vindicating those human-rights commitments, frail as they may be, that have been globally agreed since the Holocaust and which must apply without qualification as to boundaries, or cultural or national systems.

It is a day for all to recall and respond to the reality of a shared but diverse humanity, one that was rejected and defiled by an attempted genocide, a day to remember all those millions of people murdered, the 6 million Jewish people and millions more who were murdered for their religion, ethnicity, political beliefs, disability or sexual orientation, in their simply carrying the name of being ‘different’, because of some characteristic intrinsic to their being, something that was an essential part of their identity.

Ethical remembrance is an important resource, but ethical remembrance must actively take the responsibility of addressing the sources that are seeking to stoke old divisions and bitterness. As Professor McDonagh stressed, remembrance must never circumvent the responsibilities of the present dealing with the very real problems of living in peace with our neighbours.

Across the different religious systems there is, I believe, a common stress that revenge is a lessening of the human spirit rather than its fullest expression, that a seeking of justice, while more difficult, demands something much more and yet is of the essence of humanity.

It is to be hoped that those in Israel who mourn their loved ones, those who have been waiting for the release of hostages, or the thousands searching for relatives in the rubble in Gaza will welcome the long-overdue ceasefire for which there has been such a heavy price paid.

The grief inflicted on families by the horrific acts of October 7th, and the response to it, is unimaginable – the loss of civilian life, the majority women and children, their displacement, loss of homes, the necessary institutions for life itself. How can the world continue to look at the empty bowls of the starving?

The current agreement must end the killing, but, as a matter of urgency, deliver the massive scale-up in humanitarian aid which is urgently needed to save more lives. It is important that all remaining hostages are released and that all phases of the agreement are fully implemented.

It is to be hoped that the agreement will not only bring an end to the horrific loss of life and destruction which has taken place, but that it will also mark the beginning of meaningful discussions, and that the sustained diplomatic initiative which has been missing from the international community, with tragic consequences, will commence, may bring a meaningful peace and security to Israel, Palestine and the greater region, a peace that will address the root causes of the conflict as well as its aftermath, and be premised on the upholding of human rights.

When wars and conflicts become accepted or presented as seemingly unending, humanity is the loser. War is not the natural condition of humanity, cooperation is. We must recover and assert this principle at every level – nationally, regionally and internationally.

We must never lack the courage to challenge hatred and persecution in whatever forms they are sought to be manifested by promoting a world that is free from persecutions based on difference, such as faith or ethnicity, by embracing diversity, by working for equality, peace and justice, thus making possible a world that is free, too, from so many of the sources of war and conflict based on a distorted reflection of the ‘Other’.

Theologian and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin saw such a peaceful state as being achievable through a species evolution in human consciousness, believing that humankind is not only capable of living in peace but by its very structure cannot fail eventually to achieve peace.

He suggested that the concord that must ultimately prevail on Earth will materialise as,

“a […] cohesion pervaded and inspired with the same energies […] which were previously wasted in bloodshed: unanimity in search and conquest, sustained among us by the universal resolve to raise ourselves upwards, all straining shoulder to shoulder, towards even greater heights of consciousness and freedom”.

National Holocaust Memorial Day assists in such a task as Chardin envisaged of achieving lasting concord by bringing, as it does, people together from different backgrounds, for an occasion that promotes the essential empathy that is sourced and drawn from our shared humanity, stressing the importance of learning from the past, and the taking of the necessary actions for a more peaceful future.

As the poisons of antisemitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, homophobia and intolerance are once again on the rise in many parts of the world, I repeat those words as they are the words as I described them over the years, we must ensure that the lessons that foundational event, the Holocaust, offers to the world, with such extraordinary but planned cruelty and hatred, based on the regarding of others as lesser, inferior in rights or participation, are heard and understood.

The Holocaust was enabled by a regime of systematic murder that began by the manipulation of language and the spreading of fear. We, in our times, must be alert to the identification and confrontation of hate speech in any of its many guises.

We must work together in our time to ensure that hatred and anti-migrant sentiment, for example, are not permitted to deepen their shadow across Europe and the world.

Hope is an action, not just an aspiration. May we all continue to plant the alternative seeds of hope and peace, seeds that may yield a more harmonious co-existence on this shared, vulnerable planet, enabling us, when we are put to the test, again and again, however unjustly, to choose reconciliation.

May we achieve such an empowering, inclusive, ethical and solemn remembrance as not only reminds us of the depths to which the Holocaust went in building on preceding hatreds, but also make us alert to the rise of xenophobia and the rhetoric of hatred, and encourage us to renew our commitment and our shared responses to human vulnerabilities and possibilities, and may it help in the evolution of our collective consciousness towards one that will share together the joy and fulfilment of peace.

Guidhim siochán dúinn uilig d’on todchaí. Beir beannacht.