AMBASSADOR'S CORNER
WEEKLY
MESSAGE FROM AMBASSADOR JOHN BRUTON
August 4, 2005
There will be no weekly messages for the next
few weeks as the author is on leave. We
Europeans do make the most of our holidays!
In fact I have just spent part of my time off
with my son in the beautiful Polish city of
Krakow. One of the largest medieval cities in
Europe, it is filled with baroque churches and
has a market square which is the equal of the
most spectacular Italian piazza.
We saw an exhibition in Krakow marking the work
of a former US President, Herbert Hoover, who
organised food relief for a starving Europe in
the wake of both World Wars. It brought to mind
the role of other Americans: Harry Truman,
George Marshall and Averell Harriman, who
provided the dollars which set Western Europe on
the road to recovery after the Second World War
and which gave the economic and institutional
impetus for European unity.
Poland, under
Communism, did not share in that prosperity at
the time and is only now getting the benefits of
being part of a Europe which is whole and free.
One effect of Polish membership of the European
Union is that tourist numbers in Krakow are now
doubling every year. Major improvements to the
infrastructure are planned using finances to be
provided by the European Union.
We visited the camps at nearby Auschwitz and Birkenau – sites of the industrialized murder of
Jews, Gypsies and others. There were large
numbers of tourists there reflecting on this
appalling expression of ethnic nationalism and
racism.
Another much less-visited place is the museum in
the former Gestapo headquarters on Pomarska
Street in Krakow, where we saw the cells in
which the Polish resistance were tortured to
death. This museum is now so infrequently
visited that we had to get someone to unlock the
door for us. Polish resistance to the Nazis was
unequalled anywhere else in Europe. No Poles
could be found to staff a collaborationist
regime, and the Polish resistance was active
even from the very beginning or the Nazi
occupation, when the Axis seemed totally
invincible.
In a way, it is good that this museum is not
much visited or promoted, because it shows that
present-day Poles have put the tragic past
behind them. But Europeans should not forget the
lessons of World War Two either. The system of
bilateral security treaties and shifting
alliances between sovereign states, which was
Europe’s security system between 1919 and 1939,
brought Europe neither security nor peace.
The European Union, originated with American
encouragement in the early 1950’s, was designed
to replace that failed system of security with
something more durable. Instead of competing for
sovereignty over territory, European nations
were invited to pool their sovereignty to
achieve larger goals. Instead of expressing
their identity exclusively through
nation-states, Europeans were given rights as
citizens of Europe wherever they lived within
the Union.
Each generation learns something from the
previous generation. But it also forgets
something that the previous generation learned.
As I reflect on what I saw in Krakow and
Auschwitz, I hope that this generation does not
forget that the political structures that have
given Europe security and peace for the past
sixty years need constant maintenance and
renewal. That applies to the European Union, and
it also applies to the United Nations, an
organisation whose reform is to be the subject
of a major conference in September – a subject
to which I will return in future messages.
Please send me your
comments
about this or any of my weekly messages, or
other EU matters. I look forward to hearing
from you!
John Bruton
