Rededication of Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot Synagogue
An Address Delivered In Auschwitz
Prince El Hassan bin Talal
In a recent publication, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, I noted the following lines: "Time is like a seal certifying existence, but like a seal it is artificial. Past, present and future are really just verses of the same poem. Our role is to trace its theme back to God." Blessed are those who are created in God's image.
It is my solemn duty to be here with you today as a friend in my capacity as Moderator of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, where our commitment is to reconciliation between the adherents of the world's faiths while recognizing and respecting what is sacred to each other. I am aware of the delicate nature of my participation in today's ceremony inaugurating the reopening of the remaining synagogue in this place whose name at a given period of history has become synonymous with unimaginable suffering and inhuman cruelty. Further understanding through sharing, where and when we can, in our common humanity, is a duty of conscience.
What took place in Auschwitz and other extermination centers was the negation of religion, and a declaration of war on humanity. Men, women, and children were martyred not for anything they had done, but for what they were--Jews, Poles, gypsies, and anyone who, in that mad and vicious definition, was not qualified to fit into the exclusionist vision of a new world. Plato's observation that "you can't compare any two miserable people and say that one is happier [End Page 7] than the other" is of relevance in considering the universality of suffering and in coming to terms with the anthropology of anguish and of suffering of successive generations.
What makes those events particularly incomprehensible is that they took place in the heart of this European continent which had seemed to be the center of civilization--I hasten to avoid the term "Western civilization" because I do not believe in the "West and the rest"--and that the instigators and their collaborators in these atrocities were members of societies which had been at the forefront of Europe's scientific, artistic, and cultural development. This is what I felt a few short years ago when my late brother, God rest his soul, King Hussein, and the late Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, joined in the signing of the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. At that time, Yossi Sarid, who was an Israeli Minister, and myself went together with a plane-load of humanitarian assistance to the Muslims of Bosnia, carrying the slogan, "Peace in the Middle East, Peace in the Balkans."
We have not come here today to assign blame, or to judge guilt, or to calculate suffering in terms of numbers; we believe in the Day of Judgment when everyone will have to account for his deeds and misdeeds. We are gathered here today to share a mutual grief. Who amongst us cannot be moved to tears by the images which pass through our minds of those hapless and hopeless men, women, and children who died here?
The enormity of the tragedy is too great to be defined adequately in words. However, this is not a time for eloquence, but for silence: silence in which to look into our own hearts, and to try to translate revulsion into reconciliation, if this is possible, in a renewed commitment to our common humanity. During the visit of His Holiness Pope John Paul II only a few short months ago, the message of ecumenism was revived, as I stood close to him on Mount Nebo.
But if there is inexpressible sadness in this place, there is in today's ceremony a message of hope, tikvah. There are among us today men and women who survived, and we honor them. I have dear friends here with us today, but others who are absent from your number. After survival comes revival. The reopening of a place of Jewish faith, one among many others which were destroyed, symbolizes the will to survive which has characterized the Jewish people throughout two and a half millennia.
For all of us, then, there is a message: death is not the end of life. Redemption and resurrection are common mysteries of all our faiths, and it is to those faiths, to whichever faith we belong, that we must return if we are to ensure that "peace and good will to all men" will prevail over darkness and despair.
On a personal note, I was asked very politely by someone, "Why are you here?" I have tried to explain in some measure, but I would also like to add that when the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide [End Page 8] was signed, my mother-in-law, Begum Ikramullah, who was a member of the Pakistani delegation in 1948 to the United Nations and who worked on the Convention, strongly supported the work of Professor Raphael Lemkin who lost twenty-four members of his family in the Holocaust. Raphael Lemkin defined genocide as "a co-ordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves."
I have just come from the Marshall Center near Munich--yesterday--where we expressed the hope that events in Rwanda and Bosnia have rehabilitated the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Its application and interpretation have become matters of urgent action that will revive a moral imperative in our search for an ethic of human solidarity.
HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal is Moderator of the World Conference on Religion and Peace and founder of the Royal Scientific Society of Jordan. His books include Search for Peace and Christianity in the Arab World. He served as Crown Prince of Jordan during the reign of his late brother King Hussein.
