[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 75 (Monday, May 8, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6230-S6231]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     A LOOK BACK AND A LOOK FORWARD

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, today, May 8, is V-E Day, which stands for Victory in 
Europe, and it marks the end of one front of the most disastrous event 
in modern human history.
  The war in Europe was one in which 50 million civilians and military 
personnel alike died. It was not only a war, but a major crime against 
humanity.
  Two out of three Jews in Europe were scientifically exterminated--a 
total of 6 million--along with 5 million other victims. In the Soviet 
Union, 27 million people lost their lives. I visited Leningrad where 
you see 25,000 people in one mass grave, and these are plot after plot 
after plot. No country lost as much as did the people of the former 
Soviet Union.
  The war spread death across six of the seven continents and all over 
the world's oceans. In the end, much of the heart of Western 
civilization lay in ruins.
  Sixteen million one hundred twelve thousand Americans served in the 
U.S. Armed Forces during World War II, and they knew the ravages of 
war. Of these, more than 1 million were Californians; 408,000 Americans 
never came home. To these Californians and these Americans, I want to 
say you have my deepest respect, and I know I join with all of my 
Senate colleagues in saying thank you.
  For me, I was one of the lucky ones: I was 11 years old, a girl, 
living in a flat in the Marina District of San Francisco. I remember 
the blackout shades, the submarine nets under the Golden Gate Bridge, 
troops shipping out from Fort Mason 6 blocks from my home and the Nike 
gun emplacements on the marina headlands and in the Presidio. As a 
lucky one in the land of the free and the home of the brave, for me 
there was no Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen.
  V-E Day represents a victory over fascism, paranoia and the most 
devastating war in history, all sparked and guided by one man. Probably 
the most infamous demagog the world has ever seen, Hitler was described 
by one of his early associates, Otto Stresser, as a speaker ``who 
touches each private wound on the raw, liberating the unconscious, 
exposing its innermost aspirations, telling it most what it wants to 
hear.''
  Jews and Slavs were referred to as ``untermenschen,'' subhumans. 
Moscow, Leningrad, and Warsaw were hard hit, their industries left in 
ruins.
  In ``Mein Kampf,'' Hitler described what history has shown to be 
correct. He said:

       The masses more readily fall victim to the big lie than the 
     small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies * * * 
     it would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal 
     untruths, and they would not believe that others have the 
     impudence to distort the truth so infamously.

  Millions, indeed, did fall victim to the big lie. Fanatical in his 
quest for personal power, Hitler withdrew Germany from the League of 
Nations, aproclaiming that the European powers will ``never act * * * 
they'll just protest * * * and they will always be too late.''
  In fact, the West's hesitance in the face of this evil has sullied 
the word ``appeasement'' for all time.
  By 1943, Hitler held the power of life and death over 80 million 
Germans and more than twice that number of vanquished people.
  After Hitler took his own life on April 30, 1945, and the end of the 
war [[Page S6231]] was in sight, devoted followers professed their 
determination to continue.
  A Nazi-controlled newspaper said at the time:

       The heart which beat only for us, the will which blazed 
     only for us, the creative genius which thought and acted only 
     for us, the voice which so often galvanized us--all this no 
     longer exists! However low fate has brought events, Hitler's 
     achievements will illuminate, far into the distant future, 
     the epoch which began with him.

  Now, 50 years later, these words offer an ominous warning. Modern-day 
paranoia, built upon elaborate conspiracy theories and fears, I am 
sorry to say, is still very much alive today.
  For several years, we have seen an escalation in fundamentalist-
inspired killings in Egypt and Algeria, the rise of neo-Nazism in 
Germany, nationalistic fervor in former Communist States, severe anti-
immigrant backlash in France, and poison gas attacks in Japan.
  The rise of fanaticism and the terrorism it spawns is ever increasing 
right here in the United States as well.
  I think no event embodies this more than the Oklahoma City bombing.
  Whatever the final outcome of the investigation into the bombing, a 
new--and, I believe eye-opening--look at the growing trend of extremism 
is taking place across the world.
  In this country, so-called militias are growing in numbers, 
stockpiling vast arsenals, preaching hate and violence against this 
Government.
  Here are some examples:
  The Federal Emergency Management Agency has orders for Hispanics and 
African-Americans to be ``rounded up and detained'' in the event of a 
State of domestic national emergency.
  That is false.
  They say tax protesters, demonstrators against Government military 
intervention outside United States borders, and people who maintain 
weapons in their homes are the next targets.
  That is false.
  They say that FEMA advocates ``the rounding up and transfer to 
`assembly centers or relocation camps' of at least 21 million American 
Negroes.''
  That is false.
  They say there are black helicopters with no markings spying on 
citizens. They say police officers were met by ``armed men in black 
uniforms,'' reportedly from the Federal Government.
  That is false.
  They say U.N. troops are training to suppress America's people.
  That is false.
  They say Somalia was simply a practice run for occupying the United 
States.
  That is false.
  They point out that Russian trucks and personnel carriers are being 
imported as well as ``100-car trains filled with United Nations 
equipment.''
  That is false.
  They even say that Crips and Bloods--gangs that dominate some urban 
areas--are being trained to serve as something called ``shock troops'' 
and ``cannon fodder'' for house-to-house searches conducted by ``New 
World Order officers.''
  That is false.
  So theories about black helicopters, modern day concentration camps, 
and mass raids abound, we find, throughout this land of the free and 
home of the brave. Even on Internet, this system is used to spread 
conspiracy theories across our land. Even a terrorist handbook is run 
on the Internet on how to build a bomb. I read this handbook, and they 
tell you how to break into university chemical labs, how to find the 
chemicals you need, and how to steal those chemicals.
  Finally, we see neo-Nazism, even signs popping up here and there 
saying ``whites only,'' and on and on and on.
  One must ask the question on this very special day: Will the threats, 
the fear mongering, and the paranoia eventually fuel major bloodshed? 
Was it responsible for encouraging the terrible Oklahoma City bombing?
  Two years ago, militia members warned about U.N. troops poised along 
the United States-Canadian border, ready for invasion. Thirty years 
ago, the John Birch Society warned of Chinese troops in box cars along 
the Mexican border. Fifty years ago, the most deadly of all wars ended.
  History can teach us lessons if we want to learn. Or we can be doomed 
to repeat history time and time again.
  We all pray that the Oklahoma City bombing is a one-time-only event.
  Yet, as a country, this is a time for us to come together, to heal, 
to begin anew, to straighten with truth vicious lies, to look for what 
unites us and strengthens us as a people, an American people, to 
strengthen these bonds, rather than to seek what divides us.
  The wounds of the past can guide us in the future. We simply need the 
determination and the political will to fight the fear and the paranoia 
that is still so strong in our society.
  V-E Day is a chance to celebrate the conclusion of one of the darkest 
eras in our history. It is a chance to say thank you to those who gave 
their lives so that we might remain a free people.
  Let us use this day to also look deeply at America as it exists 
today. There is a great deal of work to do to sort it out, to pull this 
country together before fear and intolerance rips us apart.
  It is with the loving memory of the millions and millions of victims 
of World War II--and the hundreds of victims of the Oklahoma bombing--
that I make these remarks today. And I give thanks to those who fought 
and died in Europe so that we may know freedom.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  Mr. GRAMS addressed the Chair.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Minnesota [Mr. 
Grams], is recognized.


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