Today I am your guest here in Israel, a guest in the country, which has erected a Museum that reminds us all the heart-breaking memories of the Holocaust.
Yad Vashem is a chilling reminder of the darkest period in the history of the Jewish people and in fact all of humankind. Israel has built a unique place to learn, reflect and remember the victims, the perpetrators, those who resisted and those who survived.
Yad Vashem is not a place serving only for mourning. It is a place of humanity. Here, we must recall the lessons of history for a purpose. And the purpose is that the lessons learned must be passed on from one generation to the next, and we must understand, all of us, that we should never allow genocide, in any form, to happen again.
We must learn our lessons from the Holocaust: Despising or dehumanising any religion or people should not be permitted. Genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, anti-Semitism, Islam-phobia, Christiana-phobia, xenophobia are all historical yet contemporary evils that we all share a solemn responsibility to combat. If we understand the danger and the threat these evils pose and fight effectively against them, our children will certainly live in a better world.
There exists a long history of friendship between the Turkish and the Jewish peoples. When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, the Ottoman Sultan welcomed them into his Empire. During the Second World War, Jews fleeing Europe found safe haven in Turkey. And today, Turkey and Israel as the only two democracies in the region, share the same values and enjoy very warm relations.
The honor of being ‘Righteous Gentile’, given to those who acted heroically to save Jews, sometimes to the point of giving their own lives, is a proof that not even in the darkest hour is every light put out. In October 2004, Bernard Turiel stood in the reception hall of the Turkish Embassy in Washington and remembered the Turkish diplomat who saved his family from a Nazi death camp. In 1944, Selahattin Ülkümen, the thirty year old Consul General in Rhodes, saved forty-two Jewish families from extermination. He paid dearly for his actions when Nazi planes bombed the consulate and critically wounded his pregnant wife who died of her injuries a week after giving birth to their son. Mr. Ülkümen’s son Mehmet, now the chief of protocol at the UN office in Geneva, said he often asked his father if the sacrifice had been worth it. Ülkümen said: “If I had to live my life again, I would not change a thing. My son, you must have the courage to stand up for principles….In Islam, as in Judaism, there is a belief that if you save one life, you save humanity.” Mr. Selahattin Ülkümen who was honored in 1990 as a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem is the first non-Christian to be granted with this honor.
Anti-Semitism is a perversion. A perversion that kills. It should be eliminated. It does not exist in the history of Turks, it will have no place in their future either. It is hatred rooted in the depths of evil and no resurgence of it can be tolerated.
We pray for the souls of the Holocaust victims and for peace and justice. Only a world at peace, with justice for all, can avoid repeating the mistakes and terrible crimes of the past. We have to draw lessons from the past and start working together to build our common future; a better world for all.
With these thoughts in my mind and in this place of memories, I pay homage to the memories of those who lost their lives during the Holocaust.
Thank you.
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