Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-21-Speech-1-099"
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"en.20080421.15.1-099"2
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"Mr President, we will support any move to eradicate racism and xenophobia, promote fundamental rights and, even more so, condemn unreservedly war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of genocide. This we will do, whatever the time or the place. In this fight, there can be no taboos, neither with regard to the crimes of the past nor in connection with the tragedies currently taking place all over the world.
In terms of European history, this naturally applies to Nazism. This also applies to the fascist regimes of Mussolini, Pétain, Franco, Salazar, as it does to that of the Greek Colonels. We are also quite prepared to reiterate a radical condemnation of the atrocious crimes committed under Stalin. What happened during the colonial period must not be forgotten either.
Our unwillingness to compromise must surely apply even more to the racist, xenophobic and overtly neo-fascist tendencies that are still tolerated today at a very high level in some of the Member States, both new and old, of the European Union. There is only one thing that might be deemed unacceptable, not by our group especially but by those who have made personal sacrifices in the fight against the worst genocide in modern history, and that is the attempt surreptitiously to trivialise Nazism by placing it in a generic category that includes, in particular, Stalinism and even the regimes existing in central and eastern Europe prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I should like to quote you three statements made recently from among many more on this subject, all of which speak for themselves. Firstly, this excerpt from a statement made by the German Union of Survivors of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp. I quote:
‘The Neuengamme Association has always opposed equating National Socialism with Stalinism.’
Next, this comment made by the Advisory Board of Former Prisoners of Buchenwald. And I quote: ‘Those who seek to generalise distort the significance of Nazi barbarism in Germany’s history.’
Finally, these words spoken by the Secretary General of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, denouncing those who venture to draw a comparison between the former GDR and the Nazi regime; and I quote: ‘Any attempt to draw a parallel between them is to diminish the magnitude of the denial of rights, deportation and mass extermination of millions of innocent men, women and children during the Nazi dictatorship.’
Thank you for devoting some thought to these statements."@en1
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