Speech by Bishop Teemu Laajasalo at the Helsinki synagogue on Holocaust Memorial Day, 27th January 2026.
Honourable Minister Adlercreutz, Your Excellencies, Esteemed Rabbi and Chair of the Jewish congregation, distinguished participants in this commemoration, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Just arriving at this building says it all. Just arriving at this building says it all.
You don’t enter the synagogue directly from the street. Not even here, in the safety of Helsinki. You have to go through several checkpoints and various types of surveillance. The event’s invitation cannot be distributed publicly. The participants have to register in advance. Names and backgrounds have to be checked. Your identity is verified at the door. There are visible security arrangements, surveillance cameras and guards on the site.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is not the case in the churches of this city. This is not the case in any of my churches. This is not the case in any of the mosques of this city. And it is not the case in any of the Hindu or Buddhist temples of this city.
But here at the synagogue, this is the case. Just arriving at this building tells you everything.
It’s not because Finland’s small Jewish community wants these walls and security arrangements. They’re here because without them this small Jewish community might not exist.
All these security checks, surveillance cameras and ID cards show that this Memorial Day isn’t just about remembering history. They show that antisemitism isn’t a thing of the past. They tell us that what we are remembering is directly connected with the present moment.
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The Holocaust isn’t just an event in the past; it is a blaring warning about the future in the civilised world. Only if we honestly address the past can we face the dangers in our own time.
We all know what the outcome of the Holocaust was. It was the industrial mass murder of six million Jews. The Holocaust was also visited on the Roma, of whom as many as a million perished. Their suffering has too often been left out of the writing of history and the culture of remembrance.
The industrial scale of this mass murder is unique. Every year about five thousand of the departed are buried in Helsinki’s cemeteries. The same number died at Auschwitz in a single morning. Evil capable of such a thing requires unique expertise, planning and determined execution. It doesn’t just happen.
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Human dignity is eroded in small steps. The Holocaust didn’t begin with the murder of the little ones in those ovens. That’s where it ended. Annihilation doesn’t begin with extreme violence. It begins with speech, attitudes and what people do every day.
The first thing that happens is that language changes. People are spoken of behind their backs in generalisations and with innuendo. Individuals are lost in the crowd. Then the gaze shifts: the neighbour is seen as suspicious, foreign and threatening. With the dilution of humanity, violence gets stronger.
Hostility doesn’t always look like anger. It can seem civilised, educated, morally justified. It can be obscured by the language of justice. And that’s why it can be so deceptive.
It is one of the tasks of this Memorial Day to make us sensitive to these early signs. When a person ceases to be a name and a face and becomes a mere concept, a representative of this or that religion or group, we’re already on the steep downwards slope to destruction.
To remember is to resist. It restores humanity to what it was before attempts were made to strip it.
One of the gravest warning signs in history is that moment when the victim’s voice loses its weight. It’s when experience isn’t merely insulted but nullified. And that’s when injustice begins to take deeper root.
Today we sometimes witness outsiders explaining away the Jewish experience of antisemitism and the Roma experience of racism. The discussion easily shifts to the meaning of antisemitism and racism, who gets to define them, and in what circumstances. But from the perspective of Memorial Day, the starting point is different: the first task isn’t to argue, but to listen. It entails the recognition of silent signs.
One of the most painful lessons of the Holocaust is about the bystanders. Many got used to things; many averted their gaze; many thought it was none of their business. This coincided with systems working effectively in the service of destruction.
Remembrance asks us: when and where in the world today are we ignoring the erosion of human dignity because we are tired of or accustomed to it?
Ladies and Gentlemen,
As the chair of the Holocaust Remembrance Association, I want especially to thank you, respected ambassadors and diplomats from various countries, who have honoured this occasion with your presence. In these difficult times in the politics of the world, it is both valuable and hopeful that we can mark this day when we remember humanity’s darkest moments together, side by side.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We cannot change the past. But we can decide that our remembrance will change the future.
Our task is to work for the day when this building can again be accessed just like all the others in this city.
“Never again” is a prayer – but it is also a task.