Speech launch European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI)
Staatssecretaris Halbe Zijlstra was een van de sprekers bij de launch van European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) in Brussel. Het onder het ministerie van OCW ressorterende Nederlandse Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie heeft de coordinatie voor dit project.
“As the survivors of the Holocaust become fewer, it falls to the rest of us, and to succeeding generations, to carry forward the work of remembrance. To prevent this nightmare from ever being repeated. That is our duty today and in the future.”
These words were spoken by the former Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan, at the commemoration in 2005 of the liberation of the extermination camps, some 60 years previous at the time.
Two important tasks of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) are to study the holocaust and to keep the remembrance of this human tragedy alive.
It is virtually impossible to imagine the murder of 6 million people. But we can identify with a single person. Take, for example, Anne Frank and her famous diary, which made the holocaust a tangible experience for many people.
For the many visitors to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, and particularly the younger generations, Anne Frank has become the key symbol of the holocaust. Her personal story gives us an idea of the impact of these events that shaped the times.
The Dutch author Abel Herzberg, himself a survivor of the holocaust, expressed it as follows: “One Jew was murdered. And this happened 6 million times.”
Every year, in the early days of May, former prisoners and the surviving relatives of Holocaust victims come together for a memorial ceremony in the former Dachau concentration camp. I attended this international commemoration in 2008. I was deeply touched by the personal stories the survivors told while we were standing among the barracks. These memories must live on.
It is the job of historic scholarship to make the story of this dark period in European history complete and to persist in researching every single event that occurred. This is also the ambition of the EHRI. That is why the EHRI promotes and supports research into still relatively unknown aspects of the holocaust. It does this, for example, by focusing special attention on Eastern Europe. Most of the victims of the holocaust were, after all, Eastern Europeans. The release of archives in Eastern Europe, particularly in the former DDR, has resulted in a dramatic expansion of the source material. The EHRI has seen to it that everyone can now approach this material effectively and in a sound, scholarly manner.
By making increasingly more material accessible, the EHRI can make a valuable contribution to the battle against the denial of the Holocaust. Because as abhorrent as it is: there are still people in the world that wish to trivialize the events of those years or even deny them. By making hard information from the archives available online, the EHRI enables us to refute their claims in a solid and undeniable manner. Because the EHRI lets the facts speak clearly for themselves.
Europe has the moral obligation to make a substantial contribution to the integration of all archives in this field. It is therefore good news that the EHRI has been accepted into the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union.
To conclude: as the State Secretary of Education, Culture and Science, I am of course very proud of the fact that the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, which falls under my Ministry, is coordinating this project. This is a great honour for our country and an enormous responsibility. The NIOD has proven to the Netherlands that it can bear this responsibility very competently. The NIOD can do this for all of Europe just as well; everyone can rely on that. I therefore wish all those involved every success with the EHRI.
Thank you.