News
Forgetting Is Not an Option
The President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, visited the site of the Nazi German Auschwitz Concentration Camp together with his predecessor, Hans-Gert Pöttering. Paying tribute to the victims, Buzek said that “everyone who comes here experiences this human tragedy anew. I have been here several times myself, but it does not matter if we come here for the fifth or the tenth time. It is always a profound experience, and we are never unmoved when we leave. This is the great hope—that the millions of people who have visited Auschwitz since the war will remember the place and remember what it warns about.”
Buzek wrote in the Museum Guest Book: “With humility and deep feeling, Europe pays homage to those who died and to those who fought. We believe that we will be changed, that we will be wiser, heedful of experience, and that we will avoid cataclysms. This is why we need unity.”
In discussions with Museum director Piotr M.A. Cywiński, the president of the European Parliament declared his support for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, which is creating a Perpetual Fund to preserve the authenticity of the Auschwitz site. “There is no question that the member states of the European Union, the Union itself, and the European Parliament should move in the direction of financial support and actions to help maintain this place,” said Buzek. “All of us Europeans need this. This is our collective memory, on which we build the future. And the future must be good, and it must be better than what happened in the 20th century.”
On the previous day, members of the European Parliament took part in a panel on “Europe lost, Europe reborn” at the International Youth Meeting House in Oświęcim.
