Liberal MP Irwin Cotler was awarded the Raoul Wallenberg Centennial Medal by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation (IRWF) at a Parliament Hill reception on Oct. 28.
The event was co-hosted by House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, New Democratic leader Thomas Mulcair and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau.
Cotler was recognized for his efforts to advance human rights and Holocaust education, his defence of political prisoners and his promotion of the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat credited with saving about 100,000 Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust.
The reception was attended by members of Parliament, representatives of non-governmental organizations, community groups and academia, and family members
The MC, historian Irving Abella, referred to Cotler as “the conscience of Canada.” Scheer noted how the House of Commons – “a House of professional speakers” – becomes respectfully silent when Cotler rises.
Baird brought greetings from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and saluted Cotler as “a great Canadian and citizen of the world.”
NDP MP Murray Rankin said Cotler was one of his personal heroes in Parliament, a man who “practises what he preaches” around the world. As a fellow law professor, Rankin marvelled at how students recall Cotler’s law lectures even 40 years later.
Trudeau observed that Cotler embodies the passage from Deuteronomy: “Justice, justice shall you pursue,” adding that his father, the late Pierre Trudeau, turned to Cotler over the years for his “logic, fierce intelligence and devotion to what is right and just.”
Trudeau characterized Cotler as “an inspiration, a dear friend and mentor” to him and to all MPs. First elected in 1999, Cotler will not run in next year’s federal election.
Green party leader Elizabeth May thanked Cotler for all he has given Canada, including as minister of justice when he brought “an extraordinary blend of intelligence, kindness and compassion,” and for being a mentor to others rather than using his skills to “cut opponents to ribbons.”
Cotler accepted the medal from Mordecai Paldiel, who represented the IRWF.
He referred to the teachings of his parents, who taught him the values that shaped his life, and he paid tribute to his wife, Ariela, who nurtured these values in their four children, while being “the true politician in the family in the trenches all these years.”
“I am very moved to receive the Wallenberg Centennial Medal in remembrance of and in tribute to Canada’s first honorary citizen [in 1985] – this hero of humanity who demonstrated that one person with the compassion to care and the courage to act can confront evil, resist and transform history,” he said.
Wallenberg was arrested by the Soviets in 1945 and his fate has never been determined.
“It is tragic that the person who saved so many could not be saved by so many who could,” Cotler said. “I join the Wallenberg family in calling on President [Vladimir] Putin to open the archives, to fill in the blank spots of history, to render the justice denied for so long to Wallenberg, who redeemed humanity in the darkest days of the Holocaust.”
Cotler served as counsel to the Wallenberg family in the 1984 U.S. case Von Dardel v. U.S.S.R., which found the evidence “incontrovertible” that Wallenberg had not died in 1947 as the Soviets claimed. In 1990, Cotler co-chaired the International Commission on the Fate and Whereabouts of Raoul Wallenberg with Wallenberg’s brother, Prof. Guy von Dardel, and in 2001, he was instrumental in establishing Jan. 17 as Raoul Wallenberg Day in Canada.
Past recipients of the Raoul Wallenberg Centennial Medal include former U.K. prime minister Gordon Brown and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso.