ADDRESS
by
H.E. Mrs. Ilinka MITREVA,
Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Macedonia

at the

28th Special Session of the General Assembly to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps

New York, January 24, 2005

Mr. President,
Mr. Secretary-General,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

On this day full of emotions, a day when with pain in our hearts we remember the horrors caused by the Nazi doctrine, a day when the world remembers and commemorates the victims of the concentration camps, let me begin by reaffirming the support of the Republic of Macedonia for the convening of this highly significant special session of the General Assembly. What will the collective memory of the Holocaust be in the twenty-first century, after the last survivors have given testimony? The international community, all of us, and the future generations must never forget the unspeakable crimes against six million Jews and many others during the Second World War. The Holocaust was a dark example of a policy based on religious and ethnic exclusiveness in total disrespect for human civilization sanctities. A blindness resulting in the death of millions of innocent people due to being different. Therefore, commemorating the Holocaust victims is our moral obligation committing us to prevent such horrors from ever happening again. Today is a day of remembrance and reflection, a day for all of us to pay tribute to all those who, regardless of their ethnicity, stood against such a policy and sacrificed their lives for liberty. Today is a day to remember the survivors, who conveyed their horrible experiences and implanted them in our collective memory thus sending a strong message for future generations. The survivors remember their liberators coming from different parts of the world, to be never forgotten.

Mr. President,
Macedonia and its historically multiethnic society suffered enormous loss by an almost complete eradication of its Jewish population in the death camps during the WWII. Although Macedonians did everything in their power to protect Jewish neighbors sometimes at the expense of their own lives, in 1943, 7200 persons, making up 98% of Macedonian Jews were deported by the occupying Nazi forces to the Treblinka camp and murdered.

Macedonia remembers its Holocaust victims, and fosters remembrance by undertaking different activities. One of them is opening of a memorial center for Holocaust victims whose construction is to start this year. The Macedonian nation commemorates every March 11, the day when the Macedonian Jews looked back for the last time at their homeland while being forced on the death trains.

Mr. President,
We ask ourselves, has humanity drawn a lesson from history? We must continue asking ourselves this question every day. We have established the United Nations as an answer to the fears from the Second World War, the war that has brought untold sorrow to mankind; we have established the principle of international responsibility for the protection of human rights; we have set conditions for peace, security and justice. We are committed to practice tolerance and mutual understanding and to respect the differences. But, unfortunately, there are still existing sad examples of new forms of genocide. We have to admit that a timely reaction has been lacking on the part of the international community. We did establish courts to administer justice for the atrocities committed, but was this really enough and was this the only appropriate reaction? Therefore, this solemn special session should not only be a session of commemoration and reflection. It is expected to give more impetus to streamline UN mechanisms for exercising responsible multilateralism, to react quickly, efficiently and appropriately to all future possible cases of genocide and massive human rights violations. The commemoration must encourage us to reaffirm, once again, our strong commitment to the principles and purposes of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We must continuously fight for the values we all agreed on. It will be the best way to honor the memory of the victims of the Second World War and to pay tribute to those who fought for peace, freedom, democracy and human dignity.