Honorable colleagues, Ministers and MPs,

Excellences ambassadors,

Honorable representatives of the clergy,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to thank you for your presence here today, at the International Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony, hosted in collaboration with the United Nations Office in Tirana and the National History Museum.

This ceremony has already become a tradition for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Albania, and for the second consecutive year, we have materialized the saying “remember the others, remember yourself”.

If tradition is not a continuous organic accompaniment of today’s realities, it cannot be professor of today and, even less, master of the future.

The commemoration of the liberation of death camps cannot turn into a ritual, though legitimate, in which the decor and rhetoric prevail.

Faced with images of Jewish sufferings and beyond that, with images of a suffering population as a result of hatred, resident of the concentration camps, no words can grasp the depths of crime and distortion inflicted on human dignity.

Above all, this commemoration should remain a call, almost an appeal, to always be vigilant and keep our eyes wide open, so that such barbarism can never again find the citizenship right among us.

It would have been rather naive of Albania to consider the observer place at the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance as an honorary award for the protection that its children wholeheartedly provided to the children of Israel.

Indeed, we are proud of the discrete but genuine support, up to the point of self-sacrifice, that Albanians offered on those days marked by ideological plague, because above all else, they could not bear the sight of a defenseless man, the same man that biblical prophets have so poetically called, ” a bruised reed, and a smoldering wick” (Isaiah, 42: 3).

As observers, we have a historic role which coincides with the first meaning of this word. We must never cease to observe and lose sight of the continuity of values embodied in the memory of those who were wiped out and those who survived Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka, Majdanek.

Taking a look at the map of European countries where Jews were deported to Auschwitz, you cannot fail to notice the striking absence of Albania. It’s one of those rare cases, when the lack of Albania’s presence in a map of Europe, fills me with pride.

But this pride has a price. That of being at the forefront of efforts which can never again, barbarism or whatever its name, be rekindled. Sadly, the era of perverse alienation of values and fundamental human notions is far from over.

Yesterday, shamelessly, under the chilling phrase “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work makes you free), carved onto the rusted railings of every concentration camp, an entire population, the intelligence of an era, the flower of youth of a whole generation was being exterminated under the most gruesome violence.

Today, under the definition of a holy liberation war, thousands of youngsters are turned into fighters of a murderous cause that does not spare anyone or anything, driven by ignorance, misery and sense of alienation from a society blinded by gluttony and dismissive of the resurrecting monster of barbarism.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In January this year, Europe – and not just Paris, or the French people – experienced an unprecedented terrorist attack. It was an attack ostensibly carried out in the name of God, against freedom, aiming to provoke a confrontation between religions.

In reality, this is a confrontation between mentalities, and a battle of ignorance consolidated through the course of years, whose targets are symbols of freedom, faith, education and the free market.

Indifference to suffering, frustrations, trampling and feelings of humiliation, coupled with a deep incomprehension of the most remote realities of peoples and faiths, has shied away even the most courageous promoters of progress.

Terrorism over free thought, systematically exercised by young adults born and raised in the West, rightfully poses some questions. Terrorism is an instrument, not an ideology. It is a means of violence and intimidation to achieve certain goals. Therefore, while dealing with it, we can succeed only if we understand, fight and transform the environment that feeds it.

The retreat of progressive forces, philosophical liberalism, the weakening of state institutions and deepening of the inequality gap, without a complex recognition of another being without giving up personal identity (Pope Francis, Homily Mother Teresa Square, September 21, 2014), has become an ominous dynamic, from which political and religious extremism thrives; brunettes, green, blue marine, red, whose common objective is the same: the restriction of freedoms and continuous violation, through fear, of everyone’s free will.

But as long as extremism seems sleepy and lies on the bed of indifference, and acts such as the one that shook Paris a few weeks ago rarely occur, we remain oblivious. We put ourselves on hold, hoping that things will naturally take their course. The politics continues to avoid taking responsibility, the media often releases distracting signals, while affluent societies still declare themselves civilized and religions installed since several millennia, emancipated.

And when murder occurs, we realize that we ourselves are manufacturers of delay; that our daily activity has belittled reality.

Extremism can partially include peoples, nations, religious communities, but if the disregard includes the other part, the enlightened and most reasonable part, then peace between extremism and ignorance will be true horror, war of everyone against everyone. Killing in the name of insult will only be the superficial manifestation, for which no one will be held accountable. The core of this tragedy will be our common fault.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Albanians chose not to stay indifferent during the unprecedented atrocities of the Holocaust. They chose the right side, the side of the living.

Even today, Albanians of all faiths, through their symbolic march in Paris, demonstrate their affiliation to values and the Western civilization. With faith on our side, we will always stand behind people supporting each other, supporting life.

Freedom in life can never be equated with the freedom to take lives. This difference should be the locomotive of taking action in every corner of the world.

We should not respond to the intolerance of extremism with our intolerance or withdrawal. For this is not a confrontation between religions, nor between civilizations. This is – in the words of Shakespeare’s King Lear – war between madmen leading the blind, and the enlightened who do not wish to lose the light of wisdom.

The majority does not see this situation as an opportunity to respond to challenges, while the minority sees it as an instrument in the absence of perspective. Therefore, dealing with extremism cannot be confined to the battlefield. Victory against extremism equally depends on welfare and the common perspective we create.

Let us not forget that the Holocaust was the epitome of anti-Semitism that had gripped Europe at that time. It is now clear that anti-Semitism, Islamic extremism and terrorism, without stemming from the same source, are channeled by hatred and frustration to be jointly converged as a single and homogeneous threat against all democratic societies.

Elie Wiesel, someone who still “lives to recount”, as Father Zef Pllumbi would have put it, said that “to forget a Holocaust is to kill twice”.

Our presence here today is proof that not only we will not forget, but above all, we will not remain indifferent.

Thank you!