 And now please welcome our honorary guest tonight, the Honorable Dr. Shpiknet Bryzinski. Mr. Ambassador, your friend, Mr. Prime Minister, ladies and gentlemen, it started in Donsk. It ended in Berlin. And when it ended in Berlin, with the wall tumbling down, with Germany reunified, freedom came on an unprecedented scale to millions, to scores of millions of Central Europeans. It was historically the greatest surge in freedom since the momentous spring of nations of 1848, which also started in Germany. This surge to freedom has created what has already been mentioned. Not only a reunified Germany, but a reunified and free Europe. And within years it also brought national independence to the Baltic states, to Ukraine, and eventually the end of communism in the Soviet Union itself. It was a remarkable period of history. But what lessons should be brought from it? What are the lessons that should guide us in this still unfinished task of creating a wider community of freedom, especially in Europe? I would suggest that the basic lesson that we ought to bear in mind is the central importance of deliberate purposeful reconciliation. Reconciliation based on patience and on fidelity to truth. That is what happened in Europe. It started in a very important way between Germany and France. I remember as a young professor visiting Chancellor Conrad Adenau when I was beginning to write on serious issues of foreign policy and I wanted to see his views. And I remember particularly his face carved as if it was from granite becoming all of a sudden very emotional. When he described to me his first visit to France to General Charles de Gaulle and how deeply moved he was that de Gaulle invited him to his country home in Colombe de Dezeglis, invited him to his library. And this old man, very old at the time, was still moved years later as he returned to me this feeling. He said for the first time since the rise of capitalism I felt again to be a European, to be a fellow European. And it took patience. It wasn't a single event that created that reconciliation. And yet it was central to the unity of the divided Europe, western Europe, in the pursuit of freedom for others. And freedom for others came in part also because of the patient and sustained efforts to generate German-Polish reconciliation. That started many years before the unification when the bishops of Poland had the courage to address a letter to their brothers, the bishops of Germany, urging reconciliation and concluding with words which initially were even troubling to many for the words for the following. We forgive and we also ask for forgiveness. This was a victim asking for forgiveness for its own sins while forgiving those who perpetrated it. And that sense of humility and understanding of the complexity of history in which sometimes some are more responsible than others but very few are ever totally innocent paved the way to what Brandt did in Poland in the early 70s and what Chancellor Kohl brought to fruition by completing the reconciliation of these two peoples. And that made possible a reconciliation which was based on truth, the admission of history, the recognition of failures of history, the assumption of responsibility for these failures, the total and disguised sincere comprehensive rejection of Hitlerism by the Germans and the ability of others also then to face their own history by shaking hands and eventually embracing. These lessons are important to bear in mind today because we want to have a wider reconciliation in Europe and I think particularly for Russians, if we want a real reconciliation with Russia we have to be prepared to be patient but we also have to respect the obligation of fidelity to truth. Truth has to guide reconciliation. Truth has to be based on the total and compromising repugiation of what was wrong. German has done its part. I think Russia is moving slowly, hesitantly but also in that direction. At some point it will also face the fact that Hitlerism was evil and Stalinism was evil as well and when that moment comes we will be welcoming yet another chapter, yet another surge in the quest for freedom which was so dramatically and with such a sense of historical responsibility achieved in these dramatic days which today we still recall with a sense of death and pride and satisfaction and gratitude. Thank you.