[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 44 (Wednesday, April 20, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      DAYS OF REMEMBRANCE CEREMONY

                                 ______


                          HON. SIDNEY R. YATES

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 20, 1994

  Mr. YATES. Mr. Speaker, I was privileged on April 6 to attend a most 
eloquent and moving Days of Remembrance Ceremony in the Rotunda. As you 
know, this is an annual ceremony and I was delighted that Vice 
President Gore was one of the main speakers this year. His message on 
the meaning of the Holocaust and the importance of the Days of 
Remembrance was masterful and compelling. I thank him for his 
thoughtful eloquence and I would ask that the Vice President's remarks 
be printed at this point in the Record. I would also hope Members will 
take a moment to read and reflect on what the Vice President told us.

 Remarks as Delivered by Vice President Al Gore at Days of Remembrance 
                 Ceremony, U.S. Capitol, April 6, 1994

       Eva Heyman kept a diary during those last weeks before the 
     Nazis rounded up the Jews of Nagyvarad, then inside Hungary, 
     near its Romanian border. It was during the days when Jews 
     could still live in their homes but things were awful. In 
     May, 1944, Eva wrote: ``Everytime I think, this is the end: 
     things couldn't possibly get worse, and then I find out that 
     it's always possible for everything to get worse.''
       Sometimes she couldn't sleep. Lying awake in her bed, she 
     would hear the adults talking. ``They said that the people 
     aren't only beaten but also get electric shocks,'' she wrote. 
     ``People are brought to the hospital bleeding at the mouth 
     and ears . . . some of them also with teeth missing and the 
     soles of their feet swollen so they can't stand . . . in the 
     ghetto pharmacy there is enough poison and Grandpa gives 
     poison to the older people who ask for it. Grandpa also said 
     it would be better if he took cyanide and also gave some to 
     Grandma.''
       On this Spring day here in Washington, we think of Eva 
     Heyman, listening in her bed, and wish we could somehow go 
     back in time and rescue her.
       But she wrote during the last Spring she would ever know. 
     The gendarmes came for her family three weeks later--and 
     marched her into the gas chamber at Auschwitz on October 17. 
     She was thirteen years old.
       To read what happened to the Jews of Hungary is to read of 
     the most unspeakably barbaric acts: of Arrow Cross members, 
     in black boots and green shirts, herding Jewish women, 
     children and old men through the streets of Budapest, 
     prodding them with rifle butts, shooting those who could not 
     keep up the pace.
       Or the ritual executions. Arrow Cross guards would line up 
     three Jewish victims, and wire their wrists together. The 
     rifleman would fire into the back of one. The dead person 
     would slump forward and pull others into the Danube where the 
     freezing river and weight of the corpse finished the others. 
     That saved two bullets.
       What is the lesson of these acts for us, fifty years later?
       Certainly on this week after Passover, a commemoration of 
     freedom from slavery three thousand years old, there is this 
     lesson: tell the story. The purpose of this memorial--of this 
     day--is to tell the story to each generation.
       We tell the story, in part, to remember those who died. We 
     also tell it to remember the need for vigilance. And for the 
     Jewish people there is a need for vigilance. Is there any 
     people who have been persecuted for so long and in so many 
     places, driven from nation to nation, whether from Babylon or 
     Rome, England or Spain, or by the programs throughout Eastern 
     Europe?
       There are those who argue that Jews were victims, going 
     passively to their death. This is a lie. Jews fought back. 
     They fought back in Warsaw. They fought back throughout 
     eastern Europe.
       They even recorded accounts of their fighting back; a 
     merchant and aspiring writer, Zalman Gradowski, who fell in a 
     revolt at Auschwitz he spearheaded, buried four manuscript 
     accounts of life in death, on which he had inscribed these 
     words, ``take heed of this document, for it contains valuable 
     material for the historian.'' Because of what he and others 
     did, we can refute the liars with a wealth of detail that is 
     unassailable.
       To a Christian, reading about the Resistance, it is natural 
     to ask: what did others do? The past twelve months have 
     brought America stories of heroism by Gentiles in some 
     powerful new ways. One was the portrayal by Steven Spielberg 
     of a hero of the Nazi occupation, Oscar Schindler.
       And of course, those walking through the Holocaust Museum 
     are reminded of another hero, Raul Wallenberg, who saved 
     hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews.
       Their heroism is beyond dispute.
       The images in Spielberg's film of Schindler and Yitzchak 
     Stern, together pecking out on the typewriter the names of 
     those who could be saved * * * the images of Wallenberg in 
     Hungary, mounting trains bound for Auschwitz and ordering 
     guards to release people with ``Swedish'' passports--give the 
     lie to the myth that everyone was indifferent.
       But we must be careful not to exaggerate either their 
     numbers or their impact. The fact is, that in most cases, 
     nothing was done. And we must confront that, as well.
       Why was so little done? For a Christian, this is an 
     agonizing question as I confront it. For if we believe, as I 
     do, that religion is a powerful force for good, why did so 
     many believers and church-goers remain silent in the face of 
     such an alloyed evil?
       One lesson learned from such massive failure is expressed 
     by the famous words attributed to Pastor Niemoller: ``When 
     Hitler attacked the Jews * * * I was not a Jew therefore I 
     was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I 
     was not a Catholic, and therefore I was not concerned * * 
     *then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church--and there 
     was nobody left to be concerned.''
       Powerful words.
       But for some there is an implication in that paragraph that 
     makes it seem insufficient. For one way to read it is as a 
     morality play with self interest at its core: we must defend 
     others, so others will defend us.
       But we all know self-interest isn't enough. It is essential 
     that those who feel in no danger at all rise in defense of 
     the persecuted. The passion for justice and tolerance must be 
     so ingrained in society that even those feeling most secure 
     will take action to preserve it.
       And we must put in place safeguards--of law, of values--
     that make it impossible for the human race to give vent to 
     its most barbaric impulses during those times when the 
     individual conscience--or even the sum of those consciences--
     is too weak, or cowed, or terrorized to resist.
       Elie Weisel, talking about how Christians should react to 
     the Holocaust, quotes the Hasidic story about a great person 
     who said, ``Look, I know how to bring about a change that 
     would benefit the whole world. But the whole world is a huge 
     place, so I'll begin with my country. I don't know my whole 
     country, though; so I'll begin with my town. My town has so 
     many streets; I'll begin on my own street. There are so many 
     houses on my street; I'll begin in mine. There are so many 
     people in my house; I'll begin with myself.''
       ``You begin with yourself,'' Weisel says.
       He is certainly right.
       But of course, while we begin with ourselves, we cannot end 
     there. Not in a world where there are those who argue the 
     Holocaust never happened; that cyanide was used for 
     fumigation and that the pictures of gas chambers are 
     fabrications.
       There are people who organize themselves as the enemy of 
     truth. We must confront their lies.
       We must also confront the temptation to acknowledge 
     intellectually--but only intellectually--that the Holocaust 
     happened, and accept it numbly, without the outrage that can 
     prevent another one.
       It is too easy for Americans, shielded for over 130 years 
     from warfare inside our own borders, to say it can't happen 
     here; that the Holocaust happened fifty years ago and in 
     countries without the safeguards that make it impossible to 
     happen in America.
       But remember: the Holocaust originated in the country of 
     Goethe and Beethoven, a country that prided itself on its 
     refinement. We can never give in to complacency. No country 
     is exempt from hatred or from demagogues.
       And yet, when we look at America, we are certain in our 
     hearts that if a Holocaust happened here it would not be in 
     the America we know. It would not be in the America that has 
     carefully separated and balanced the powers of the state and 
     protected the freedom of it citizens. It would not be in the 
     America whose Declaration of Independence calling for the 
     ``inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of 
     happiness'' is venerated not simply within our National 
     Archives, but lives and breathes in our national character.
       It would not be the America whose courts have time and 
     again affirmed the separation of Church and state that has 
     been one of our most sacred traditions. It would not be the 
     America whose liberating forces entered the death camps in 
     1945, to free the survivors, and provide witness that the 
     worst stories we had heard were true.
       And it would not be the America that has placed a Holocaust 
     Museum in its National Capitol.
       It was a controversial step. There were those who argued 
     this was not an American experience. Who will want to see it? 
     they asked. Who, surrounded by places like the Air & Space 
     Museum, would subject themselves to images of death?
       Those questions have been answered. They have been answered 
     by those who crowd in to the Holocaust Museum every weekend. 
     Who stand patiently in line, people of every national origin, 
     every color and every religion to expose their children to 
     exhibits of the most savage things done to children in 
     history.
       The Holocaust is not an event to be remembered just by 
     those who survived--or just by Jews or by gypsies. Its 
     memorial should continue to be part of the American 
     experience for everyone.
       And there is no better place for it than Washington, to 
     remind those who make the agonizing decisions of foreign 
     policy of the consequences of their decisions.
       One remembers, of course, not just to ward off dire 
     consequences. We remember also so we can be inspired. And 
     that is the meaning of Raul Wallenberg.
       As opposed to Schindler, who seems to have gradually become 
     aware of this responsibility, Wallenberg knew right from the 
     beginning.
       In Kati Marton's book about Wallenberg, she tells of the 
     night he got a terrified call from Tibor Vandor, one of his 
     office workers. Agnes Vandor was having a baby. They were 
     afraid to go to the hospital.
       Wallenberg brought the pregnant woman into his own bedroom, 
     found a Jewish doctor, then paced the corridor outside all 
     night, standing guard, while she gave birth.
       The greatful parents insisted Wallenberg help name the 
     baby, and he did: Yvonne.
       Years later, this story appeared in the newspapers, and 
     Yvonne recognized the details, came forward, and identified 
     herself.
       But, she said, there was one detail that was wrong. She 
     wasn't Jewish.
       She had nothing against Jews--in fact, she had married one 
     herself. But she was sure her parents were Catholic.
       It was only then, that she learned how terrified her 
     parents had been--in postwar Hungary--to admit that they were 
     Jewish. They didn't even dare tell her.
       The effects of the Holocaust did not end when the killing 
     ended. It scarred those who survived. It caused a generation 
     of Jews to feel they could never again trust the countries in 
     which they lived. Some didn't even dare admit their own 
     heritage to their children.
       The value of a Raul Wallenberg is to inspire us so we never 
     again fail those who need our trust. Looking back with the 
     perspective of half a century we remember him and others in 
     order to strengthen us when we need strength.
       Because the need for heroes is not dead. You see it in 
     Sarajevo. You see it in Somalia. You see it in the Middle 
     East where the courageous leaders of Israel and its Arab 
     neighbors are taking bold risks for peace.
       For much of the world the ideals of America--though not 
     always its practices--have stood as its polar opposite. In 
     the long, upward journey of the human experiment, our 
     ideals--freedom, equality, tolerance, justice for all--
     represent a destiny.
       To reach that destiny we must never forget where human 
     beings have failed. So, on this day, we allow--even force--
     ourselves to again remember the Holocaust in all its barbaric 
     detail. We should not shrink from it. We remember Eva Heyman 
     and mourn the barbarism inflicted on her because only then 
     will we know the terrible capabilities that can lie coiled in 
     the human soul.
       But we also remember the acts of heroism like those of Raul 
     Wallenberg. Because that teaches us what we are capable of 
     doing. And that means when the need occurs we won't flinch 
     from our moral responsibility. We will meet our obligations, 
     in our daily lives or in the business that takes place under 
     the marble dome of this building, and make ourselves in the 
     words of Isaiah, ``as hiding places from the winds and 
     shelters from the tempests; as rivers of water in dry places; 
     as shadows of a great rock in a weary land.''

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