McAleese: ‘We must never forget’

PEOPLE must reflect on the role ordinary individuals played in the Nazi killing machine as ceremonies take place to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp, President Mary McAleese said yesterday.

President McAleese said her thoughts would be with all the victims of the Nazi death camps as she joined survivors and over 40 heads of state at memorial ceremonies in southern Poland.

She said the way to honour the millions of people who lost their lives during the Second World War was to focus on the messages parents send to children and the actions people take when they face bigotry.

The President warned that people must not forget the lessons from Nazism and the Second World War, that it was regular people who allowed the deaths to take place.

Mrs McAleese, as she reflected on the ceremonies before she travelled to Eastern Europe yesterday, warned that the Nazis did not invent anti-Semitism but simply built upon it. It had been an element of the lives of people for many generations.

“They gave to their children an irrational hatred of Jews in the same way that people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children an irrational hatred of Catholics, in the same way that people give to their children an outrageous and irrational hatred of those who are of different colour and all of those things.”

The President, who was asked if the country should apologise for Eamon DeValera, the then Taoiseach, offering condolences upon Adolf Hitler’s death and in respect of the State’s neutrality during the war, said that there were many things to be ashamed of during that time in Ireland.

The President told RTÉ Radio: “Is there an apology that is big enough to ever, ever, ever blot out the dreadful consequences of what happened at Auschwitz and Birkenau? I’m sure if there was such a construct, if there was such a thing the world would have found it by now.”