Genocide: - DIIS

Holocaust, Genocide and European Values
Holocaust, Genocide and European Values
Uffe Østergård
We can no longer afford to take that which is good in the past and simply call it our
heritage.... to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself
time will bury in oblivion. 1
Of recent years the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe has
been discussed and researched extensively. Why is this so more than 50
years after this outrage took place? How can we explain that the term Holocaust
has come into usage in European languages to such a degree that a
Danish Center dedicated to the study of genocide established in 1999 was
given the title the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies?
Instead of Holocaust disappearing from the collective consciousness as
many feared it might, it appears that apart from the well known interest in
the United States and Israel many member states of the European Union
have begun to refl ect on the common European, not exclusively German,
responsibility for the extermination of the Jews. This concern with the subject
was strongly accentuated by the participation of more than 40 heads of
government in the major conference “The Stockholm International Forum
on Holocaust” held in Stockholm in January 2000 and which resolved that
this process of refl ection and efforts to prevent a repetition should be incorporated
in the continued refl ection on the nature of European civilization.
Taking the responsibility for this monstrous crime does not seem to be a
very positive way of defi ning Europe. But for the responsible political leaders
present in Stockholm it was a necessary admission. “European values”
have been referred to in the preambles of the treaties defi ning European
co-operation from 1957 until to today. Now it seems necessary to describe
the positive as well as the negative sides of them if anything realistic is to
come out of the attempts to defi ne the basic rights of the European citizens
in a common charter.
1 Hannah Arendt (1951), The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York, p. IX.
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