President Higgins says people must combat 'hatred and anti-migrant feeling' across the world

President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins pictured at the Holocaust Memorial Day held in the Royal Convention Centre, Dublin. Picture: Robbie Reynolds

People must work together to ensure “hatred and anti-migrant feeling” do not deepen across Europe and the world, President Michael D Higgins has said.

The President was speaking as he delivered a speech at the National Holocaust Memorial Day Commemoration in Dublin, warning of the rise of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, homophobia and intolerance.

“As anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, homophobia and intolerance are once again on the rise in parts of Europe and many parts of the world, we must as we remember the Holocaust collectively, ensure the lesson it offered to the world with such cruelty and hate, of regarding others as lesser, inferior in rights or participation, are heard and understood,” President Higgins said.

“The Holocaust was enabled by a regime of systematic murder that began by the manipulation of language and the spreading of fear. We, in our times, must be alert to the identification and confrontation of hate speech in any of its many guises.

We must work together to ensure that hatred and anti-migrant feeling, for example, are not allowed to deepen their shadow across Europe and the world. In the delivery of a moral context in our lives, we are all migrants in time.” 

President Higgins said that as people recall the Holocaust, there is relevance to the present, saying that the world is seeing “rising political authoritarianism, polarization and violence”. 

He adds that this atmosphere “threatens democracy” and helps promote division, exclusion and racism.

The President said that it is “vital” for younger generations to learn of the Holocaust, while adding that it is of “utmost importance” for it to be remembered in the fullest context with nothing hidden.

“Such a move requires us to confront the horror of this period, but we must never forget the deeper challenge of asking how did it come to be? How can a process of dehumanisation be so effective and with such little resistance? What indifference, beyond any manipulation of ignorance and hatred, allowed it to become the terminus of horror that we commemorate today?” the President said.

President Higgins said that Holocaust Memorial Day, 79 years on from the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, “is a time to remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, together with the millions more murdered under the attrition of Nazi persecution”.

The President also spoke about the ongoing war in Gaza and the preceding attack against Israel by Hamas on October 7.

“While we come together today to remember the victims of the Holocaust, it is important that we recognise the very significant trauma of recent events, following the appalling atrocities which took place on 7th October perpetuated by Hamas,” he said.

“The violence of that action, the killing, abuse and abduction of hostages from their families, of other young people attending a music festival, was a horrific and morally reprehensible act.

“If we believe that life itself is paramount, that all lives matter, then we must acknowledge too that, since 7th October, far too many lives, and particularly those of women and children, have already been lost.”