Apr 26, 2017 - heart, made me cry repeatedly. Mona's mother Lisa grew up in the very same quarter of Vienna as I did; I
Opening Statement by H.E. Mr. Jan Kickert Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations « Children of Willesden Lane » presented by Mona Golabek United Nations, New York 26 April 2017
I want to first of all thank all our partners of today’s event: our host, the UN and the Education Outreach Program of the UN’s DPI, the Facing History and Ourselves Program, the Hold on to Your Music Foundation and the New York City Department of Education. But I want to especially thank Mona Golabek, who shared with us the memory of her mother Lisa Jura and through her that of an outstanding Holocaust survivor. She thus gives a human face and voice to the innumerable victims who else fade into the anonymity of numbers. She tells the story of a teenage girl, a kid, just like you. We suffer with Lisa as her family is ripped apart by the barbarity of the Nazi regime. But maybe more importantly, Lisa’s story also gives us encouragement and the strength to believe that dignity and beauty will win over humiliation and destruction. It was almost immediately after my arrival in New York 1.5 years ago that my colleague Waltraud from the Austrian Consulate introduced me to Mona’s book. It touched me to the depth of my heart, made me cry repeatedly. Mona’s mother Lisa grew up in the very same quarter of Vienna as I did; I used to take the very same tram from the Franzensbrückenstraße to go to the city center – Lisa for her piano classes, I to school. I stand before you as a representative of a country, Austria, from where many of the worst perpetrators in the Holocaust originate. For us following generations, it is impossible to comprehend how our forefathers could do this or let it happen. The lesson we should draw is that we have to constantly immunize ourselves against evil, by keeping the memory of unspeakable crimes like the Shoa alive; by staying alert, conscientious, and vigilant, already against what comes before such atrocities: prejudices and discrimination against those considered “different” in any way – whether it is bigotry, homophobia, antisemitism, islamophobia, racism, or xenophobia. After the Holocaust we all pledged: never again. And yet, within the last two decades alone the Rwandan genocide happened, the one in Srebrenica/Bosnia, the one against the Jezidis in Iraq, and other unspeakable crimes against
humanity. And new ones might be in the making, warning signals to that effect come today from South Sudan or Burundi. So when we now put ourselves in the place of Lisa, the teenager, feel in ourselves what she is going through: We should resolve that not only do we ourselves never want to endure what Lisa and her family had suffered, but that we will also not allow others to experience the same agony. But let’s also take inspiration from this girl who lived her dream despite all the horror. Lisa found the strength to overcome the cruelest of circumstances in bringing good to the people around her and to the world, even in the darkest of times, through her passion: music. Her legacy, a message of hope, peace and beauty, lives on, not least through her daughter Mona, who we are grateful to for keeping her mother’s memory alive in such a touching way.
