The entrance to the British War Cemetery in Bayeux bears this inscription – Nos a Gulielmo Victi Victoris Patriam Liberavimus (We who were conquered by William have now liberated his country). This Latin phrase elegantly and poignantly bridges a millennium of turbulent history, from the Norman invasion in 1066 leading to the conquest of Britain after the Battle of Hastings, to the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944, D-Day,  leading to the liberation of the European continent from the Nazi yoke. D-Day was on June 6, 1944, and today marks its 75th anniversary.

The parallels one could draw between these two momentous events are endless. However, there are also many other perspectives, with lessons to be learnt from all of them. The battles and turmoil of the past should have served to enlighten us to the absolute futility of war. 

D-Day was the first step in a struggle against oppression and tyranny, intended to carry the torch of freedom where darkness still ruled. On that day, the greatest force ever assembled came together from all four corners of the globe, united in one common ideal. 

It was not a fight for territory, profit or expansion. It was not a war against a people, and the blood spilt on the sands of Normandy in order to establish the bridgehead of democracy knew no nationality.

Have we learnt anything from this lesson passed on to us by history? Was that great price paid in young human life, so cruelly cut short, all in vain? Are we ready to go through all that all over again? Entire generations of young men were lost in the two world wars of the last century, wars that saw their origin in extreme nationalism, and a false sense of the glory of war.

The horrors of those global conflagrations led some great people to reflect deeply, and ultimately to propose a way forward for Europe to be built on the pillars of peace, dialogue and cooperation for mutual benefit.

Schuman, Monet, Adenauer, Spinelli and many others laid out the ideals around which the European Union would sprout and grow. This has given us Europeans over 74 years of peace and prosperity, no minor achievement. Disputes are resolved around tables and not submitted to the test of bloody battle. Discussions on thorny issues are solved in a spirit of compromise, where all the players yield a little so that they all gain a lot. Everybody wins.

War has no compromise, and when nobody yields, there are no winners, just lesser losers. So, the answers to the questions at the beginning of this paragraph are ‘Yes, we did learn to some extent’ and ‘No, the price paid was not in vain’.

It takes an absolute lack of basic humanity and decency to describe these places as ‘Poland’s Disneyland’

However, with the passage of time, complacency sets in, and we take for granted things that were achieved by our forefathers with so much difficulty. We forget that the principles of unity, dialogue and compromise are needed most in times when we are facing greatest difficulties. 

In recent years, we are seeing the rise of shortsighted ‘national’ interests which are taking over from the collective sense of belonging and sharing that have served us all so well in these past decades. We seem to have forgotten that such voices, which seek scapegoats and try to draw hateful comparisons, were what gave birth to the evil Nazi movement that pushed the world over the cliff edge into the abyss of a modern dark ages. 

Just last weekend, I visited the concentration camps in Auschwitz and Birkenau.  The silence and the grim faces of the visitors bore witness to the sheer inhumanity and callousness more than the hollowed-out shells of buildings, or the evidence of horrendous acts in the form of photographs, and other remnants of what used to be people’s lives.  

And yet, we are once again seeing this terrible demon raise its head in the form of ethnic division, pure selfishness and greed, and fanatical nationalism. Irresponsible exponents of such false ideologies are hell-bent on destroying existing structures, justifying themselves by imperfections and promising nothing else in return. 

It takes an absolute lack of basic humanity and decency to describe these places as ‘Poland’s Disneyland’, as one such false prophet recently tried to impress by saying. 

We all need to be attentive students to the lessons of history, for which the tuition costs were paid in the currency of human sacrifice. Those young men in those landing-barges were no superheroes. They were scared stiff, and knew that their chances of escaping the conflict unscathed were limited. 

But they knew what they were fighting for, and forged ahead convinced of the righteousness of their mission. And they died in their thousands. The headstones of the tombs of the innumerable young men and women who lost their lives on that fateful day in June 1944 scream out at us, trying to draw our attention. 

Let us not be deaf to them, and ultimately to each other. They do not want us to squander what they achieved for us. They do not want to have died in vain. We owe them a great debt that we can only repay by avoiding a next generation having to go through what they did. 

On this day, but also on other days, we have a duty of memory, an obligation of gratitude and an opportunity to profit. Their D-Day was 75 years ago today. Ours is every day.

This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece