Opening of The Holocaust and the United Nations exhibit “Architecture of Murder: The Auschwitz-Birkenau Blueprints”

Mr. Secretary-General, Minister Edelstein, dignitaries, fellow Ambassadors, ladies and gentlemen;

I thank Yad Vashem for compiling this unique exhibit, the United Nations for hosting it, and Kiyo Akasaka, for welcoming me here this evening. This exhibit unveils the architecture of the death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. It unveils blueprints and architectural drawings, which were preliminary steps in the process of carrying out the Nazi policy of exterminating, first and foremost, the Jews.

This is the banal architecture of the worst genocide in history. This exhibit bears human significance to us all, and personal significance to many. For me, Auschwitz is not a blueprint.

My grandfather, Shimon Peterseil and my grandmother, Hadas, were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
They were victims of a diabolical policy to exterminate them, and all their likes; to wipe them out, off the face of this earth, because, and only because, they were Jews.

They never saw these blueprints. They saw with their own eyes the barbed-wire fences, the barracks, the gas chambers, and the crematorium. The terrible fate of my grandparents, and millions others, in the Holocaust, is not only a family tragedy. It is a tragedy for humanity.

Yet this exhibit is not only to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. Nor is it only intended for the survivors and their families. It is, most of all, for those of us who were not there at all.

Through exhibits such as this, through education, and through commemoration, we can bend the future away from hatred and death in the direction of peaceful and just life. It is our responsibility to the future, to all generations to come.

To paraphrase the words of Primo Levy:

We should carve these terrible facts in our hearts,
remember them at home, in the street, going to bed or rising,
and repeat them to our children,
so that our house shall not fall apart
and that our children will not turn their back on us.

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The remarks above were delivered at the exhibit opening of “Architecture of Murder: The Auschwitz-Birkenau Blueprints" at United Nations Headquarters in New York. For more information, please visit The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme.