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Speech by Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe

A name is the beginning of human dignity.

The Holocaust started by taking that away.

Numbers instead of names.

Erasure instead of memory.

So much has been said, and yet nothing is ever said enough.

Jews were targeted and murdered, simply for being Jews.

Roma and Sinti, disabled people, homosexuals, political prisoners, and many others met the same fate.

They were shot and buried in mass graves, in places like Babi Yar.

They were starved behind ghetto walls.

Beaten.

Deported.

And then killed in gas chambers.

Chelmno. Treblinka. Majdanek. Belzec. Sobibor. Auschwitz.

This is what happened.

The Council of Europe is less than an hour from the Natzweiler-Struthof camp.

Yet it stands for everything the Holocaust sought to destroy.

The Council of Europe is a peace project built on a solemn pledge: never again.

A peace built on human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.

But that promise cannot survive on memory alone.

It depends on what we pass on.

And the urgency is real.

The last survivors are leaving us, one by one.

With them, living memory falls silent.

As Simone Veil said here at the Council of Europe:

“La Shoah ne devait avoir ni témoin ni histoire.”

The Holocaust was meant to leave no witnesses, and no trace in history.

As the era of witnesses ends, she urged us to think about how the Holocaust will be taught.

That responsibility is now ours to carry forward.

We must help younger generations grasp how a society can descend into such inhumanity.

And give them the tools to resist disinformation, denial, and the manipulation of history.

Antisemitism did not end in 1945.

Nor did hatred that targets people for their faith.

To remember the Holocaust is to refuse all forms of religious intolerance, here and now.

That is why I have appointed a Special Representative to help lead this work.

Because memory must lead to vigilance, and vigilance must lead to dialogue.

And that also means refusing silence.

During the Holocaust, there was the silence that looked away.

That made room for the crime.

And there was another silence.

The silence of those who hid a child.

Who protected a neighbour.

Who saved a life, quietly.

Silence is never neutral.

In our own time, antisemitism appears in new forms, including online.

Targeting communities.

Testing our democracies.

We are living through a moment of rupture.

A moment when the international order built after the Second World War is receding.

When law can seem fragile.

When force can seem to return.

It is in moments like these that we must remember who we are.

What Europe has lived through.

What was lost.

What was rebuilt.

And the values on which it was rebuilt.

The Holocaust was a collapse of humanity.

As the era of witnesses ends, the responsibility passes to us.

To teach.

To transmit.

To equip younger generations against distortion and hatred.

Memory alone is not enough.

The only lasting barrier against antisemitism, discrimination, and extremism is what we do with that memory.

To speak the names.

To confront hatred.

To defend democracy.

So that we never have to say “never again”…

ever again.

Thank you.