Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-21-Speech-1-121"

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"en.20080421.15.1-121"2
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"Unfortunately it is a fact that although nearly all westerners are aware of the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, most of them have heard nothing about the gulags. A survey recently conducted in Sweden among 15-20 year-olds showed that their basic knowledge of communism is very poor, almost non-existent. A study showed that 90% of Swedes have never heard of the gulags, while 95% knew what Auschwitz was. Unfortunately, my father had experience of both types of camp and therefore I cannot accept the idea that the suffering under the Soviet regime can be considered second-rate, as if there is a fear that talking about it reduces the significance of the crimes of Nazism. That attitude must be changed. This is not always the simplest of matters for the Socialist Group in the European Parliament as several of the parties within it have a communist past. Awareness-raising in the Socialist Group is therefore of even greater importance. I remember debates on this same issue when the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, of which I was a member, condemned the crimes of communism a couple of years ago. At the time I was one of the people who took the floor and, thanks obviously to the fact that there are so many countries within that organisation with experience of the Soviet regime, condemnation was achieved more quickly than in the European Parliament. I am entirely convinced that if the European Union truly espouses its own declared values, it must very clearly express its attitude to the past in terms of those values. This is not to rewrite the past, as several critics of this matter have claimed. It is to establish the historical truth."@en1

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