Corruptions of the human heart

I had the extreme honour of joining Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, members of the diplomatic corps and the Admor of Malta on January 27 to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day with the opening of a stunning exhibit from the Anne Frank Museum that is on display in the vaults of Auberge de Castille, in Valletta until February 18. Admission to the exhibit and to the vaults is free.

This exhibit is one that should not be missed in this nation of families. That is after all one of the underlying messages of Anne Frank’s story – how a loving family was able to survive together for as long as possible against the hatred of the Holocaust. Anne, with the love of her family, triumphed over the Nazi terror by getting the last word by way of her surviving diary. It is a powerful word, well spoken and truthful, and how fortunate we are the Prime Minister amplified Anne’s voice of truth in his remarks at the opening of the beautifully done exhibit in his own historic building. The exhibit will help all of us, those who lived through those terrible years, and those fortunate enough to be born after the war, to remember the millions lost and the lessons for all human kind.

While attending the opening, I was reminded of a lesson that at root teaches something important about ourselves we dare not forget: That the failure to love our neighbour is but a short distance from ignoring our neighbour and that disregard of neighbour is but a short distance from silently tolerating political-, racial-, gender- and sexual orientation-based oppression and hate.

Karl Borg, director of Karl Borg Events, has, through this exhibit, made it possible to remember one young victim of the Holocaust – one of the estimated six million Jewish victims of murder. But the exhibit reminds us the Holocaust is not just a grievous crime against humanity; it is a warning flag against any modern practice that denigrates human life as expendable or manipulable.

The Holocaust of the 1940s is of such magnitude of death it scarcely allows comparison; but let us at least see that the suicide bomber in Moscow or Madrid or London or New York; the slave trader who imprisons young women in prostitution or the drug trade; and the tribal or ethnic madness of Rwanda, Sudan and the Balkans are cousins of the Holocaust, if not siblings.

Anne Frank’s diary is not a story of defeat but of perseverance in the face of adversity. My late father was part of the B17 “Flying Fortress” squadron that is sometimes said to have “defeated Germany”; but it was not Germany that my father helped to defeat but rather Hitler’s misleading madness of hate. Like the noble spirit of Anne Frank, Germany as a people persevered and today the German nation occupies a position of international achievement in matters of economy and community.

Anne Frank’s personal recounting of the story of the Holocaust puts names on the six million – it makes an otherwise incomprehensible crime capable of being felt tangibly. And in feeling the depth of her personal story and the death and fear of the others she recounts in her diary, we see that so many more victims of the Holocaust and modern hate crimes have joined those whose hair, shoes, eyeglasses and suitcases line the dismal halls of Auschwitz.

I know Auschwitz because the father of my father was a Polish intellectual who dreamed and prepared to teach at the world-renowned Jagellonian in Krakow but died when the Kmiec family scattered into the US, England and France to escape, not as Jews, but as a family of intellectuals – who often suffered the same fate.

Years later, while Dean of the Catholic University of America, I would be invited to teach at the Jagellonian and there I would see first-hand the lists of murdered faculty members – a list that very likely would have contained my grandfather’s name had he not left his homeland and forfeited his scholarly aspirations and dreams. Of course, if the name Jan Kmiec did appear on the long list of murdered humanities and science faculties members, I would not be here today to remember.

Remember what?

Certainly not that any single nation was intrinsically evil.

No, that which animated the hate of the Holocaust can strike any people and any nation; it is a problem of human pride, of self-centeredness, of ego that fuels one’s hatred to actions that exceed all bounds of civilised society to discard the universal value of human life.

We are also to remember that today’s hatreds: genocide based upon race, religion, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, are corruptions of the human heart with collateral external effects.

It is odd we call one of those effects “irregular” migration, for what human being would consciously – “regularly” – stay put in the face of such offensiveness and risk to life, freedom and family? There is nothing irregular about escaping that.

The United States welcomed my grandfather. Today, Malta receives a significant number of migrants for the same reason.

The diary of Anne Frank asks us to remember honestly the common reason for migration – man’s inhumanity to man. And having remembered, we are asked one more thing: not to look the other way in the face of persecution, prejudice, hatred and oppression but to welcome and help as best we can those who have been so mistreated. This is why Malta makes efforts to resettle migrant populations and my embassy and others have been especially privileged to do the same.

You see, it is a privilege to help the modern-day equivalents of Anne Frank persevere, for it amplifies love and, in so doing, God willing, it will also avert the seed of profound hatred represented by the Holocaust from ever again taking root in the human soul.

Prof. Kmiec is the US Ambassador to Malta.