[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 39 (Wednesday, April 13, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 13, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
 ADDRESS OF DR. GYORGY SZABAD, SPEAKER OF THE HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENT, AT 
               THE ``DAYS OF REMEMBRANCE'' COMMEMORATION

                                 ______


                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 13, 1994

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on April 6 last week, the annual National 
Civic Commemoration for the Holocaust ``Days of Remembrance'' was held 
in the Great Rotunda of our Nation's Capitol Building. This is the 
yearly observance organized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council in 
memory of the 6 million women, children, and men who died in the Nazi 
Holocaust.
  This year, Mr. Speaker, the commemoration focused on the Holocaust in 
Hungary, which began exactly 50 years ago with the Nazi German 
occupation of Hungary. Prior to the German military occupation of 
Hungary, which began on March 19, 1944, there were some 750,000 Jews 
living in Hungary. Ten months later on January 17, 1945, when the 
Soviet Army completed the liberation of Budapest from German troops, 
there were only 125,000 remaining. If it had not been for the genuine 
heroism of Swedish humanitarian and diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg, and 
others who actively worked to preserve Hungarian Jews from the Nazi 
``final solution,'' that number would have been considerably smaller.
  Mr. Speaker, among those who were saved directly by Raoul Wallenberg 
or through the inspiration of his efforts in motivating Swiss, 
Portuguese, and other diplomats to save the lives of tens of thousands 
of Hungarians were my wife Annette and me. For us, this was not just a 
great but abstract humanitarian gesture; this was an act that literally 
saved our lives. We are eternally grateful to Raoul Wallenberg and 
others who during this nightmare of horror risked their lives to save 
people they did not know.
  This year's commemoration included a number of particularly 
meaningful addresses, including an excellent one by Vice President Al 
Gore. One that I would like to call to the particular attention of my 
colleagues in the Congress is the speech given last week by His 
Excellency Dr. Gyorgy Szabad, the Speaker of the Hungarian Parliament. 
His remarks were particularly meaningful, because Dr. Szabad was also a 
survivor of the Holocaust in Hungary.
  Mr. Speaker, the Congress was not in session last week when the 
National Civic Commemoration was held here in Washington. I ask that 
Dr. Szabad's remarks be placed in the Record, and I urge my colleagues 
to carefully consider his thoughtful remarks.

       Ladies and gentleman, rememberers and reminders, fifty 
     years ago, as the forces fighting for the freedom of mankind 
     were preparing for the decisive clash against inhuman Nazism, 
     Hitler was still able to slake his thirst for blood with the 
     deaths of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews. He was 
     able to do so because his troops occupied Hungary on 19th 
     March, 1944. He was led to take this step above all because 
     he was dissatisfied with the fact that in Hungary where a 
     struggle was being waged in the government between a group 
     that was also attempting to rescue the Jews and the Nazi 
     supporters who wished to see their destruction, and together 
     with the foreign Jews who had found refuge in Hungary, 
     hundreds of thousands of them could still live in hope of 
     survival. But with the Nazi occupation horrors far worse than 
     the imagined horrors of hell engulfed the Hungarian Jews. All 
     those who survived the Holocaust can tell of the forms they 
     took. Just a few days before his execution Miklos Radnoti 
     expressed this in poetry, perhaps far more eloquently than 
     whole volumes of memoirs.

     ``I fell beside his body, it turned over and lay there tight 
           in death as cord.
     Shot in the nape. You, too, will end up like that, I muttered 
           to myself, lie calm, be still.
     Death's flower opens in my patience here.
     Der springt noch auf, over me, I hear.
     Blood mixed with dirt grows clotted on my ear.''

       The lines I have quoted, in a translation by Thomas Land 
     Orszag, were found when the poet was exhumed.
       This 1944 chapter in the history of the Holocaust brought 
     the destruction of the greater part of the Hungarian Jews--
     from infants to the aged. The guilt of the dreadful crime 
     lies with Hitlerism, but also with those who helped Eichman 
     and his henchmen in Hungary. In speaking of all this, it is 
     definitely justified to stress that of all the countries 
     occupied by the Nazis it was in Hungary that the greatest 
     number survived the Holocaust. I was one of them. And that 
     was only possible with the praiseworthy help of a 
     considerable part of Hungarian society.
       Looking back on the horrors of half a century ago, we all 
     felt and feel that it is our duty to struggle against 
     prejudices, including anti-Semitism, and also to erect a 
     memorial to the memory of the martyrs of the Holocaust that 
     is, in the words of Horace, ``more enduring than brass''. 
     There are many justifications for this. I believe that two of 
     them are the most important of all. The first is that people 
     should never be placed at the mercy of dictatorship of any 
     kind, anywhere on the earth. Mankind should be able to live 
     everywhere and at all times within the frame of democracy. 
     The second justification is related not least of all to the 
     fact that half a century has now passed since the death of 
     the martyrs of the Holocaust. It is now only the older 
     generation, and soon it will be only the very elderly who 
     remember them. It follows from this that it is increasingly 
     the behavior of today's Jews and people of Jewish origin that 
     is becoming the dominant factor in their judgment. Those who 
     want to keep the memories of the martyrs alive in a fitting 
     way, who want to stress how valuable, moral, noble of spirit, 
     tolerant and innocent they were, almost certainly consciously 
     strive to make themselves the vehicles of the same values so 
     that the coming generations can see from their example what 
     people were destroyed by the wicked of the past and what 
     enormous human value the world lost with them.
       I thank you for your attention.

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