Speech by Bishop Teemu Laajasalo, Chair of the Finnish Holocaust Remembrance Association, at the commemoration of the eight Jews handed over by Finland to Nazi Germany on 6 November 1942.
Honourable Minister, Honourable Ambassadors, Dear Jewish Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I live three hundred metres away from here on Korkeavuorenkatu. Every day I walk past the stumbling stone on my street. The name on my street’s stumbling stone is Hans Robert Martin Korn. Hans Korn was 23 when the Finnish authorities handed him over to the German Nazi regime.
The young man’s name on my street’s cold stones makes me pause for three reasons.
The first pause
It is one person’s stone. The annihilation of six million people was the annihilation of six million names. Six million different Jews. Six million individuals. At the core of remembrance lies the remembrance of individuals – thinking their names and speaking them aloud. Every time I pass that stone, I reflect on the fact that the life of this twenty-three-year-old young man was unique. The destruction of a human life requires dehumanisation. Giving faces and names to victims restores some of their stolen dignity. Naming them is an antidote to the practice of numbering prisoners.
Second pause
The industrial scale of the Holocaust is what makes it unique. Today we must remember that the system of authority can also be at the service of total depravity. When this happens, strength, diligence, accuracy, reliability, efficiency and executive power become vices at the disposal of evil.
The system handed this man over to destruction, to certain death – the Finnish system, the Finnish authorities. As we all know, today’s Germany has the world’s most sophisticated ability to remember its own history, its most difficult phases – Vergangenheitsbewältigung or Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung or Erinnerungskultur. In Finland we have much to learn about dealing with our own history. We find it difficult to look at ourselves in the mirror and recognise and acknowledge the mistakes of our history. It is easier to explain them away as necessities or Realpolitik.
Third pause
The remembrance of both the grief of individuals and the responsibility of society is key to reflection and the future. We should not compare the Holocaust with other events. And other events should not be compared with the Holocaust. But remembering the Holocaust at an individual and societal level forces us to view our present and future through its lens and to ask difficult questions of ourselves. Where is antisemitism festering today? How do we allow ourselves to ignore antisemitism today? These are very important questions. But they are not enough. If we have learned anything, we must ask more broadly: where does hatred of people fester today – regardless of religion, ethnicity or culture? Where are we abandoning people to annihilation today? Where do we avoid looking today? Where do we accept and tolerate evil today?
May this day be one of remembrance for the eight Jews the authorities handed over. May this day be one of remembrance for all their relatives and descendants. But may this day also remind all of us – those of us on the sidelines, as well as the authorities – to ensure we never have to erect memorials in the future because of what we have done or failed to do.