Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-11-Speech-3-133"
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"en.20050511.16.3-133"2
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".
Mr President, I was born one month before 1945. My parents left Germany 72 years ago. In 1933, my father was a lawyer; he defended the Red Assistance and he should have been arrested. I was born exactly nine months after the allied landings in Normandy. I am a child of the liberation, of a military invasion that liberated European soil and allowed my parents to have a child, a ‘child of liberty’.
That is why our remembrance – my remembrance – is paved with horrors. The horror of Auschwitz, the
that demonstrated the worst that mankind is capable of. Kolima, the
that demonstrated what the most barbaric political ideology is capable of doing. Oradour-sur-Glane, which demonstrated what a military occupation can give rise to. Katyn, which demonstrated that liberation and destruction can take place at the same time. The entire Polish elite was massacred by the Red Army in order to prevent the Polish people from joining together and creating their own independent State. We then continued to commit massacres which were beyond compare, but which were nonetheless comparably lethal and cruel. There were the massacres of the colonial wars, and Srebrenica, which took place 10 years ago now, to the very day.
It is as a result of these massacres that men and women, who do not belong to my political party, but whose importance I acknowledge for having succeeded – because they did succeed – in building this Europe, be they De Gaulle or Adenauer, Willy Brandt or Helmut Kohl, François Mitterrand – little does it matter – did something extraordinary. For our part, those of us born after 1945 are the children of Europe, but we are also the children of anti-totalitarianism. This Europe was created to prevent totalitarianism from ever resurging, whether from the left or the right. To quote a song familiar to some: there is no supreme saviour, neither god nor king nor leader nor Communism nor Neo-liberalism. There is no liberating ideology of mankind. There is only one small and very fragile thing that many people mock and which is simply called ‘democracy’.
My dear friends, ladies and gentlemen, it is always either easy or difficult for a German to talk about ‘the war, 60 years on’. Germany, though, experienced both National Socialism, with all its barbarity, and Communist totalitarianism. Germany, then, is also a symbol of Europe, and if there is any obligation incumbent on our generation, then it is the obligation to speak the truth. My concern is not to set out to the House what Europe’s political tasks are, for we can do that day in and day out. My concern is solely with how seriously we take this anti-totalitarian obligation. If we really do act upon it, we may not, we cannot, disregard human rights and respect for human dignity for the sake of
of any kind.
We have to talk to the Russians, but we also have to talk about Chechnya. We have to talk about crimes. We have to talk to the Chinese, but we have to talk about the way in which the Chinese people are oppressed. We cannot simply say ‘so let’s just lift the embargo’, and pass on to the next item on the agenda. So the Chinese get a few weapons. So they are sold a few Transrapids. With a history like Europe’s behind us, we simply cannot do that!
It is because we are obligated to truth, because we believe in Europe, that we all, when shaping and organising the Europe of the future, have to remember what Europe once was and what it must not be allowed to be again.
It is in times such as these that I – as one of those who think of Europe’s history in those terms – am proud to campaign for a constitution that embodies the heritage of the anti-totalitarian Europe. I am convinced that we will win; this constitution will become real in Europe. That is what I believe; it is an obligation upon us for the sake of our children, who will inherit what our parents gave us for safe keeping."@en1
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"anus mundi"1
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