Ottawa, ON

Survivors, worthy rabbis, fellow Canadians.

Last year on this solemn occasion, the Prime Minister spoke of the Holocaust as a “genocide so premeditated and grotesque in design, so monstrous and barbaric in scale and so systematic and efficient in execution that it stands alone in the annals of human evil.”

These words are true.

But we must acknowledge that words can neither summarize this evil, nor plumb its depths.

And so at times we must fall silent.

At times the most fully human response to the fact of the Holocaust is to pray, to contemplate, to remember – just as the Prime Minister did last summer, in his visit to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz; and as I did not long ago at the ravine called Babyn Yar in Kiev.

When speaking of the Holocaust, and the history of hatred that made it possible, truly, words fail us.

But use them we must.

Not only because the power of language is part of what it is to be human.

But because that power can be abused, to the most devastating effect.

Just as it is through words that we make our laws, pass on our faith, and express our highest sentiments, so it is through words that we can also lie, vilify, and incite.

Words can be used to harass and intimidate.

They can be used to portray facts as myths.

And, as the sad history of anti-Semitism shows us, words can be used, quite literally, to dehumanize.

C’est avec les mots que nous faisons nos lois, que nous transmettons nos croyances et que nous exprimons nos sentiments les plus nobles. Mais c’est aussi avec les mots que l’on ment, que l’on calomnie et que l’on incite. Les mots peuvent servir à harceler et à intimider. Ils peuvent servir à faire passer des faits pour des mythes.

When these things happen, silence is not a moral option.

Because, as Elie Wiesel taught us, “silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”

So when the ancient and pernicious hatred for the Jewish people is manifest in our own day and in our own country, we must take sides.

We must speak out.

We must not be neutral.

(Donc, quand la haine ancienne et pernicieuse envers les Juifs se manifeste de nos jours et dans notre propre pays, il faut prendre parti. Nous ne devons pas rester neutres.)

We can join international efforts to commemorate, to research, and to educate on the Holocaust.

We can acknowledge our own country’s history of anti-Semitism.

We can refuse to tolerate the use of international forums, and academic institutions, to make a scapegoat of the Jewish homeland.

We can withdraw public support for those who promote hatred or defend terror.

When the spectre of anti-Semitism rises, we may feel a sickening, wearying sense of futility.
But while hatred begins in hearts, it is spread in words.

In this country we have the precious freedom literally to contradict that hatred, to contain and possibly one day to eradicate it.

This freedom gives us hope.

And that hope is renewed in commemorations such as this.

(Cette liberté nous donne de l’espoir. Cet espoir est ravivé par des cérémonies comme celle d’aujourd’hui.

Our hope is renewed, not only in the continuing struggle against anti-Semitism.

It is renewed also in our efforts to protect the dignity of all people, to promote a true and lasting understanding of human rights. Either every human life has inalienable dignity and is worthy of respect, or all human lives are vulnerable to arbitrary power.

To acknowledge the singular horror of the Holocaust is to acknowledge that there are lines we may never cross.

It is to acknowledge that human rights are either universal or non-existent.

Reconnaître l’horreur singulière de l’Holocauste, c’est reconnaître qu’il y a des frontières que nous ne devons jamais transgresser. C’est reconnaître que les droits de la personne s’appliquent à tous les êtres humains. Sinon ils n’existent pas.

It is to remind ourselves that if we tolerate the dehumanization of some of our fellow human beings, none of us is safe.

It is to remember that we have it in us to recognize and to honour our common humanity.

It is to believe that it is possible to learn from history, and that certain crimes might never be repeated.

When Pope John Paull I visited Yad Vashem in 2000, he began as I will close, with the words of the Psalms, the ancient prayerbook of the Jewish people:
“I have become like a broken vessel.

I hear the whispering of many – terror on every side! -

As they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life. But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God’.”