A Refuge In Memory

The scale of man’s capacity to inflict suffering on other men is matched only by that of his incapacity to learn the lessons of history. Perhaps the most ignored lesson of history is that wars rarely solve problems. If anything, they create new problems for future generations.

A railway station is an unlikely place to be reminded of this. Especially the magnificent central railway terminus in Milan, Europe’s fashion capital. But housed in a once-hidden part of this station is a memorial to the victims of one of worst war crimes committed by the fascist regime of Mussolini in Italy in collusion with Hitler’s Germany. Between 1943 and 1945, thousands of deportees, mostly Jews, were secretly herded into livestock compartments of trains at this station and sent to death chambers in Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

On a cool September night, my Italian friend Ulderico Maggi took me to this Shoah Memorial of Milan (‘shoah’ in Hebrew means catastrophe). After I went around it, and read a heart-wrenching testimony by Liliana Segre, one of the few survivors of the fateful journey, a simple but profound message of hers kept echoing in my mind: “Remind people to REMEMBER.”

The echo of these words returned to me, carrying the funereal sound of another, contemporary catastrophe, when Ulderico took me to another part of the memorial where refugees from the civil wars in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and other places are being sheltered temporarily. Tens of thousands of men, women and children, uprooted from their homes by deadly armed conflicts, have been fleeing to Europe. They can be seen at train stations in cities all along the uncertain route of their migration. Risking their lives, they arrive in overcrowded, often makeshift, rubber boats, mainly on the shores of Greece and Italy. Thousands have drowned in the Mediterranean.

Even in our age of desensitising information and visual overload, the horror of war and its aftermath is sometimes conveyed by a single photograph, such as that of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian boy of Kurdish origin whose body washed ashore on a Turkish beach last month, prompting an emotional outcry worldwide, especially Europe. The response of the continent that caused two world wars, and is hence no stranger to the pain of war-induced migration, has been mixed. In some places, refugees are turned away as unwelcome intruders. Some Europeans see the refugee phenomenon as an “unarmed Muslim invasion of Christian Europe”. But in many places, refugees are also being received with the empathy and dignity due to any human being in distress.

The refugee centre at the Shoah Memorial  of Milan is run by the Community of Sant’Egidio, a Pope Francis-inspired organisation devoted to inter-religious dialogue, conflict resolution and service to the needy and suffering. Here, Ulderico and his fellow-volunteers of the community provide shelter, food, medical care to scores of refugees. “They typically stay here for three or four days before moving to other destinations, mostly in Germany and Sweden, which have shown greater willingness than other European nations to accept refugees,” Ulderico told me. The Community of Sant’Egidio has a database of like-minded organisations operating refugee shelters in other parts of Europe and provides this information to the migrants.

I was struck by the contrast between the memorial to the Holocaust victims of World War II and the refugee centre for the victims of the current wars, both occupying the same physical space in Milan’s railway station. The centrepiece of the Shoah Memorial is a long grey-coloured wall bearing just one word—‘INDIFFERENZA’ (Italian for indifference). The word is significant because the “globalisation of indifference” is how Pope Francis has angrily described the international community’s attitude towards refugees everywhere.

The current debate in Europe is mostly centred on which country should accept how many refugees. Hungary, France, UK, Italy and Austria are being criticised for making themselves unwelcome. In contrast, German chancellor Angela Merkel is being praised for announcing that her country would accept 8 lakh asylum seekers. This hospitality cannot be attributed simply to German prosperity. After all, there are several prosperous Arab countries much closer to the battlegrounds in West Asia and North Africa, and their populations profess the same faith, Islam, as that of most of the refugees going to Europe. Yet, neither their fabulous wealth nor their hypocritically professed Islamic solidarity has made Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikhdoms show the kind of empathy many parts of distant Europe are showing the refugees. More scandalously, Saudi Arabia has itself become a brutal aggressor in neighbouring Yemen, a Muslim country.

Does the solution to the crisis lie in an even distribution of refugees across Europe? Not at all. Indeed, if the refugee influx grows in size and speed, as is likely, the mood—even in large-hearted Germany—will swing in favour of restrictions and border control. Europe could even witness a rise in racial and religious violence.

If this happens, and if the wars in West Asia and North Africa continue unabated, the world will see a humanitarian crisis far bigger than the one unfolding now. Already one-third of Syria’s pre-war population of 22 million have fled. To this add the 2.5 lakh Syrians who have been killed in the civil war raging since 2011. Libya is now a country without a state, a lawless land thrown to the care of militias. Iraq has been effectively trifurcated. To add to all this, Turkey’s autocratic ruler Tayyip Erdogan has intensified the war on Kurdish people in his own country.

Speaking at an inter-faith peace conference organised by the Community of Sant’Egidio last month in Tirana, I stated that the real solution lies in the international community acting together, and acting immediately, to stop the wars in West Asia and North Africa. This is needed not only to end the refugee crisis, but also to defeat the isis. The Islamic State’s victory and rule in a large part of the most unstable part of the world will surely pose danger to countries and cultures far from the killing fields, including India.

Besides the machinations of colonial and neo-colonial Europe, American warmongering too has contributed to the violent destabilisation in the Arab world. The US’s unjustifiable war in Iraq flouting international law, its interference in the internal affairs of countries in the region, its direct or indirect support of Islamist groups, its turning a blind eye to the repeated excesses of Israel, and the active collusion of several European countries in America’s militarism have created a widening circle of conflicts no single power can control. This is not to absolve regional dictators dead and alive, including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, of their guilt. Arab states must end their insensitivity to people’s cry for change and embrace democracy, pluralism and benevolent, transparent and accountable governance. The road to peace and justice in the Arab world, and the road to bring those refugees, who may in future be willing, back home, can only be paved by a concerted UN-led initiative of all stakeholders, with all of them renouncing war as an option. Can it ever happen? All of us must hope—and act—for it to happen. In doing so, we must heed the haunting appeal of Liliana Segre, the 84-year-old Auschwitz survivor: “Remind people to REMEMBER.”

(The writer was an aide to former PM A.B. Vajpayee.)