Uitreiking Geuzenpenning 2008

Your Majesty, Dr Ahtisaari, ladies and gentlemen,

On previous occasions the speech for the Geuzenpenning was given in Dutch, but I would like to speak directly to our guest of honour, and will therefore speak in English.

Dames en heren, jongens en meisjes, ik hoop dat u het niet erg vindt dat ik de komende paar minuten Engels praat zodat onze eregast, Dr Ahtisaari, me kan verstaan.

Dr Ahtisaari, usually when a prize is given, the prize does honour to the winner, but sometimes the winner does honour to the prize. This is an occasion like that; in the future people will say about the Geuzenpenning: "this was also won by Martti Ahtisaari". You have an exceptional track record in finding peaceful solutions violent conflicts in the world. Among them are Namibia, which became independent in 1990. Also you helped settle the crisis in Atjeh, the bloody conflict was Kosovo, where you had been appointed by the United Nations. In all these cases your strength was in first listening, truly listening which is not an easy thing to do at all, to the parties involved. Then you slowly zoomed in on a rather general agreement, which you made sure once agreed upon would be unnegiotiatable, and if a party dared to ignore it, you would not hesitate to use sanctions. And finally you would make sure that all parties recognized that it was in their mutual interest to reach an agreement; in your view a good agreement is sustainable, and above all practical, pragmatic. That requires a change of mind, to move away from your old frame of mind, zoomed in on war, to a new frame of mind, focused on peace. To move away from the conflicts of the past, and discover the challenges of the future. You managed to do that.

You were the president of Finland, a great country but not the biggest country in Europe, but by your skills, and perseverance, you have become a truly great European, who can make us all proud of being Europeans. It was not written in the stars that you would go this way, it was your own will, and that goes to show how single people can make the difference, how one person can end a conflict that might otherwise have cost many more lives.

The Geuzenpenning refers of course to two periods in the Dutch history when brave men and women fought against oppression, and sacrificed their lives. Originally the Geuzen fought against the Spanish occupation, and thus laid the foundation of the country we now call the Netherlands. And when in 1940 that independent and free country was occupied by the German army and ruled by the nazis, people fought for their freedom. On March 13 in the year 1941, only 67 years ago, 15 members of the Geuzen resistance group and three other young men walked to the place in the dunes where they were to be executed, shot. They were murdered because they stood for freedom. They walked to their death singing psalm 43. I will cite a few lines:

Why must I walk about mournfully, because of the oppression of the enemy?
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?

I find that a wonderful picture, "Why is my soul disquieted within me?" which applies by the way to us all, because for us today is presumably not our dying day, but one day will be our day, and therefore we have a disquited soul, because we know also our day will come.

These brave young men walked in the dunes of the Waalsdorpervlakte, and sang Psalm 43.

The Dutch poet Jan Campert, who was to be murdered later in the concentration camp Neuengamme, wrote about that event his famous poem, "Het lied der achttien doden" from which I will cite the first and last verse, in Dutch:

Een cel is maar twee meter lang
en nauw twee meter breed,
wel kleiner nog is het stuk grond,
dat ik nu nog niet weet,
maar waar ik naamloos rusten zal,
mijn makkers bovendien,
wij waren achttien in getal,
geen zal de avond zien.

Ik zie hoe 't eerste morgenlicht
door 't hooge venster draalt.
Mijn God, maak mij het sterven licht -
en zoo ik heb gefaald
gelijk een elk wel falen kan,
schenk mij dan Uw genâ,
opdat ik heenga als een man
als ik voor de loopen sta.

If one thinks about it: less than a lifetime away, thousands of Dutch men, women and children have been murdered. Of the 130 thousand Dutch jews 110 thousand were killed. It boggles the mind, to even think about it. The house I now live in in Bussum with my wife and two sons was owned by a Jewish family.
There is a website, jewishmonument.nl, on which one can trace the Dutch part of the holocaust by the street address. For our house, then the home of the Wessels family, here is the record:

Maid servant, Elisabeth Pijpeman, born Utrecht, December 24th 1917; Sobibor, April 9th 1943, reached the age of 25 years. Eduard Meyer Wessel Amsterdam, November 27th 1923; Auschwitz, September 24th 1943, Son. Reached the age of 19 year.
My own son will be 18 in two months.

Shortly after our family moved into the house, I spent a couple of months painting fanatically all the wood in the house, scraping and burning off the old paint, and one day I thought: the paint I am burning away now, was possibly put on by Eduard Wessel, when he was 18 years old, and had no clue that and how and when he was going to die. And where. Fully isolated from his family. Totally alone. And he had no clue why he was going to die. He could not have, because there was no why.

Friends, what lesson can we draw from history? I am afraid there is no easy lesson. The Geuzen were freedom fighters, but of course the Spanish occupation saw them as terrorists. Sometimes one needs to negociate a peace, as you did many times Dr Ahtisaari, but sometimes the total brutality can only be conquered by firm resistance.

Here is maybe one lesson we can certainly learn. Freedom is not a safe and easy property to have. It needs hard work, maintenance. Every time again we need to think - and to think hard - about what freedom is. We need to address the fact that sometimes the freedom of one person limits the freedom of the other, in a society where we live together. Therefore freedom does not mean: just do whatever you jolly well like. It means: stand firm in oppression, but speak softly in strength. Trust your own judgement, but also have the courage to reconsider, and listen to others. Freedom is not a right, it is a duty.

Your Majesty, Dr Ahtisaari, we will now hear Jan Camperts poem, we will, together, sing Psalm 43, which was sung by the Geuzen 67 years ago today, on that day, on March 13th, when they walked and would not see the next spring, only one week later.

May we and our children live in freedom.

Thanks for your attention.