The European Parliament held a solemn ceremony today on International Holocaust Remembrance Day to honour the victims of the greatest atrocity in history. In her address, President Metsola welcomed Holocaust survivor Tatiana Bucci and said that Never Again has to guide the choices we make today and the Europe we choose to build together.
Dear Members, Distinguished guests, We come together to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. To honour the victims of the greatest atrocity in history. And to renew our responsibility to remember, and to act. I want to begin by wishing a very warm welcome to our guest of honour, Tatiana Bucci. Tatiana, grazie per essere con noi oggi. And we send our warm regards to your sister, Andra, who could not be with us today. You and Andra were just children when you were deported to Auschwitz. Against all odds, you survived, and you have devoted your lives to making sure the world never forgets what you witnessed.
Last year, at the ceremony marking eighty years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the final words of a Polish Jewish poet, Henryka Łazowertówna, were read aloud. She wrote them as she was being deported: “I am going away. Far away. To an unknown railway station, not to be found on any map. Above the station, the skies are hanging like an enormous, black lid. I am very calm. And very saddened. I am no more.” Those haunting words gave voice to the millions who were silenced in the Holocaust, and to what Europe must never allow to happen again. The Holocaust was the darkest chapter of human history. Six million Jewish men, women and children were murdered by the Nazi regime in a deliberate, organised, state-sponsored attempt to wipe out an entire people. Alongside them, Roma and Sinti communities, people with disabilities, minorities and political opponents were all murdered by the same machinery of hatred. This did not happen overnight. It happened step by step, law by law, train by train. Rights were stripped away. Lives were reduced to numbers. And silence allowed evil to remain and spread unchecked. Among the victims were one and a half million Jewish children. Torn from their families and murdered without ever understanding why. The Holocaust, when seen through the eyes of a child, reveals its cruelty in its purest form. Tatiana and Andra lived that reality at just four and six years old. Tatiana’s presence with us today is a testament not only to survival, but to courage. She carries the memory of what happened so that others are not condemned to repeat it. Europe emerged from the Holocaust carrying the weight of what had been done, and the knowledge of how easily it had happened. We believed this was a lesson learned, a hatred confined to the past. But antisemitism was never extinguished. It survived. It adapted. And today it still casts its shadow across our continent and beyond. Today, antisemitism spreads faster and wider than ever, amplified online and on social media. Lies travel in seconds. Old conspiracies are given new life. And the consequences are terrifyingly real, as we were reminded most recently on Bondi Beach, where Jewish families celebrating Hanukkah were shot down in cold blood. Yet despite the pain and the loss, Jewish life continues to flourish. And Europe must ensure that it is protected. It is up to us to confront hatred wherever it happens, before it is allowed to take root again. This is why this European Parliament will always remember, and why we will always speak up. Remembrance is not passive. It places a responsibility on all of us. If “Never Again” is to mean anything at all, it has to guide the choices we make today and the Europe we choose to build together. Thank you.