Address by Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople, at the March of the Living, Holocaust Memorial Day, May 2, 2019 – Auschwitz-Birkenau. Dear Brothers and Sisters, In the history of humanity, very few places have ever incited the same degree of fear, abomination and scandal as the ground we stand on today. Personally, we have never been in such a place where cruelty was so clearly, so brutally and so nakedly displayed. This is where the perfect machine of systematic mass degradation and extermination of people, the insatiable hatred against our fellow man, the expressionless faces of guards, the painful and cynical experiments on the human body and soul, the tortures, the gas chambers and the crematoria, dominated and transformed daily existence into an unfathomable hell and tragedy. These two names - “Auschwitz-Birkenau” - encapsulate what humankind, when motivated by pure hatred, can do to desacralize and deface the dignity of the human person, who is created in the image of God. The sign at the entrance of this former Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp says: “Arbeit macht frei,” which means “Work sets you free.” But what work? What freedom? This seemingly optimistic slogan was, of course, a false hope and a great lie. Work meant captivity. Freedom meant utter dehumanization and death. Over 1.1 million men, women and children lost their lives here. Auschwitz will forever remain a symbol of radical evil – proof of the destruction and violence that man is capable of when he falls victim to brainwashing and the rhetoric of hatred; when his emotions are neutralized and his creative powers are depleted. We are profoundly moved by the opportunity given to us today to visit this space where so many suffered and died. For almost twenty-eight years, from the very beginning of our tenure as Ecumenical Patriarch, we have denounced anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia, but also religious extremism and fanaticism, rejecting the attempts by people of any faith, or by any state or institution to denigrate the very basic right of others to exist, to live their otherness. The complete extermination of the Jewish people (Endlösung) was disturbingly conjured up in the cruel minds of the Nazi leaders – men who had traded love for hate and given themselves over entirely to the lie that we are not all created in God’s image. Indeed, the image we have for our fellow man determines our attitude toward him. Before violence can be expressed through action, it must first be born in the heart and mind of man. We would like to remind you of what we said when we visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in May 2014: The future can be no better than the past, if people from all cultures, religions and political thought do not learn well the lessons of the Shoah. Great tyranny and oppression were stopped in some small way by ordinary people, many of whom are commemorated in the Garden of the Righteous among the Nations. In the midst of this tragedy, love was the only hope. Even in the ocean and the dark abysses of barbarism, the magnificence of the human soul, mercy, self-sacrifice and the power to resist evil did not disappear. During the terrible years of the Shoah – in some of humanity’s darkest hours – there were many stories of pure sacrificial love. Among them, we would like to remind you of Saint Maria of Paris, together with her friends and her son, Yuri. During the Second World War, she was arrested by the Gestapo in France for helping Jews escape persecution and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. On Holy Saturday, 1945, she was selected for the gas chambers. According to some accounts, she may actually have volunteered to take the place of another prisoner who had been chosen to die that day. Not only is she a saint of the Orthodox Church; she has also been named one of the Righteous Among the Nations. Her destiny reminds us of the self-sacrificial love that becomes divine – a love that “never fails.” (1 Cor. 13:8) Dear Brothers and Sisters, We believe that dialogue is a precious gift of God and a vehicle to confront the many faces of dehumanization. It leads to the overcoming of prejudices and mistrust; it promotes mutual familiarization and appreciation; it builds respect for difference; it builds bridges. Dialogue is always a gesture and source of solidarity. It is our conviction that religions can contribute toward a wider, stronger trajectory and effectiveness of dialogue. True faith strengthens the commitment of human action, and it enlarges our witness for freedom and justice, even providing support to our efforts when they appear to be at an impasse. In this sense, the progress of interreligious dialogue is a significant factor in promoting the spirit of dialogue and bolstering trust in the human capacity to establish a culture of freedom, justice and peace. As stated in the Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, which convened in Crete in June 2016, “true peace is not achieved by force of arms, but only through love that ‘does not seek its own’ (1 Cor. 13.5). The oil of faith must be used to soothe and heal the wounds of others, not to rekindle new fires of hatred.” (par.17) In closing, on this special day of remembrance, we strongly emphasize that it is not enough to simply remember the victims of the Shoah. Today, unfortunately, violence and hatred continue to rear their ugly faces. Silence in the face of injustice and exploitation, silence in the shadows of helpless suffering, and silence to the ideologies of racism and discrimination, exacerbate these problems. We must do everything within our means to ensure that the tragedy of Shoah never happens again. And the best way to achieve this is to stand against contemporary evils and inhumanities.