[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 177 (Thursday, November 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S16853-S16854]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       REMEMBERING KRISTALLNACHT

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, tonight is the 57th anniversary of a 
horrible event. In Germany, 57 years ago this evening, it was ``the 
night of broken glass''--Kristallnacht--when throughout Nazi Germany, 
Jews were killed and Jewish cultural and business sites were destroyed 
in an organized campaign by the Nazi state.
  In a little under 2 days, many Jews were murdered, and 30,000 were 
arrested by the Nazi authorities, sent to swell the growing populations 
of Dachau, Buchenwald, and the other camps already built. On the night 
of Kristallnacht, over 1,000 synagogues were destroyed, and their 
sacred texts were burned and defiled. Jewish businesses around the 
country were sacked. Cemeteries were desecrated. Homes were burned. The 
police and fire departments were instructed not to intervene.
  Kristallnacht marked an escalation in kind of the Nazi persecution. 
It came barely 6 weeks after the infamous Munich conference, which 
produced the chilling declaration of peace in our time. After 
Kristallnacht, the world could no longer ignore the behavior of this 
evil regime. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, 5 days later:

       The news of the past few days in Germany has deeply shocked 
     public opinion in the United States * * * I, myself, could 
     scarcely believe that such things could occur in 20th century 
     civilization.

  But within a week of Kristallnacht, Jews were banned from the German 
school system. Within a month, Jews were being banned from public 
places.
  The Holocaust, as it would come to be known, was fully underway. 
Within less than a decade, this conflagration of historic proportions 
would result in the systematic murders of 6 million European Jews.
  While it represented the nadir of anti-Semitism in our modern age, 
the destruction spawned by the Nazis' racial hatred consumed many more 
millions of others, including Poles, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, 
homosexuals, and persons with physical and mental disabilities.
  Mr. President, 57 years after Kristallnacht, we are fortunate to 
still have survivors of the Holocaust among us. There are still some 
neighborhoods in this country where, tonight, survivors and their 
families commemorate the night of broken glass by burning candles in 
the windows. These flames are in memory of those who suffered the 
Holocaust. These flickers in the windows are the testaments of the 
survivors.
  Mr. President, I worry about the memory of the Holocaust when the 
survivors will no longer be here. With each passing year, we have fewer 
survivors among us.
  Mr. President, as the decades have passed from the dark era of the 
Holocaust, I have been greatly troubled by the increase in 
pronouncements by those who willfully disbelieve the existence of the 
Holocaust. These ``Holocaust deniers,'' as they have come to be known, 
present us with a troubling specter. They threaten our collective 
memory with lies, distortions, and half-truths to challenge the reality 
of the Holocaust.
  One of America's preeminent scholars of this phenomenon, Dr. Deborah 
Lipstadt of Emory University, has written:

       While Holocaust denial is not a new phenomenon, it has 
     increased in scope and intensity since the mid-1970's. It is 
     important to understand that deniers do not work in a vacuum. 
     Part of their success can be traced to an intellectual 
     climate that has made its mark in the scholarly world during 
     the past two decades. The deniers are plying their trade at a 
     time when much of history seems up for grabs and attacks on 
     the Western rationalist tradition have become commonplace.

  Sadly, this erosion in the intellectual climate has infected our 
popular culture. Today, in addition to the pseudo-scholarly venues the 
Holocaust deniers have created, they have managed to present their 
injurious views on high school campuses, in the media, and, in a few 
cases, in the political process.
  Mr. President, we are fortunate, for many reasons, that we live in a 
free and democratic society, and one of those reasons is that freedom 
preserves the ability of the scholar to study historical truth. An open 
society such as ours allows the student of history to apply methods of 
historical scrutiny and verification without bias or distortion, and 
thus to openly determine historical fact.
  I must stress, Mr. President, that the same principles of an open and 
democratic society also allow for the holding of unpopular opinions, 
however factually incorrect or hurtful to others. A free society must 
protect the opinions of all, Mr. President, and that includes the 
contrarians and solipsists. If you choose to believe the Earth is flat, 
that is your right in this society.
  Our freedom of expression is wide, but falsehoods must be answered 
with the truth. Denying the Holocaust is absurd.
  Holocaust denial may be animated by ignorance and solipsism, but we 
cannot avoid the fact that it is often motivated by anti-Semitism and 
hatred. We must recognize that many of those who promote Holocaust 
denial do so not out of an innocent but willful ignorance, but do so to 
promote political agendas, anti-Semitism and hatred.
  We must deplore, in the words of the scholar Kenneth Stern ``anti-
Semitism masquerading as objective scholarly inquiry.''
  That is why I am introducing this resolution today, along with 
several of my colleagues, which ``deplores persistent, ongoing and 
malicious efforts by some persons of this country and abroad to deny 
the historical reality of the Holocaust.'' This resolution also praises 
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for its essential work in honoring 
the memory of all the victims of the Holocaust, and teaching ``all who 
are willing to learn profoundly compelling and universally resonant 
moral lessons.''
  Mr. President, as the last generation of Holocaust survivors fades 
from our midst, we are left with a chasm, a generational divide between 
the primary witnesses and the rest of us, who must carry their witness. 
Into that chasm the Holocaust deniers may throw their malicious lies.
  It is our responsibility that we close that chasm with a dedication 
to promoting scholarship about the Holocaust. We must cultivate the 
history of the Holocaust in order to preserve our memory and to 
reinforce the lessons we learn from such horrors. We must strengthen 
our younger generation's weakening grasp on history.
  A free and democratic society must be supported by an informed 
populace. And an informed populace requires a knowledge of history. As 
individuals with amnesia suffer degrees of disorientation, a society 
separated from history is bereft of its shared experience with the 
world.
  Mr. President, we must recognize the crucial role played by education 
in preserving the memory of the Holocaust. In 1980, the U.S. Congress 
assumed this responsibility when we chartered the U.S. Holocaust 
Memorial Museum. Since its opening in 1993, the Museum has played a 
signal role in teaching the history of the Holocaust.
  So powerful has the museum's message been that in it has been 
operating beyond capacity since its opening. Of the more than 2 million 
visitors each year, 80 percent have traveled more than 100 miles to 
visit this awesome place. As of today, 5.3 million have visited this 
remarkable institution, a number four times greater than expected.
  People come to witness and to learn. More than 11,000 scholars and 
university students, more than 700 members of the media and museum 
community, and more than 14,500 survivors have used the museum's 
research institute. Through its connections to the information 
superhighway, 50,000 inquiries 

[[Page S 16854]]
come every week. Requests for teaching materials have come from every 
State in our Nation. Over 400,000 students from around the country came 
in school groups this year.
  Mr. President, the success of the Museum demonstrates our country's 
interest in studying the Holocaust. It is most reassuring to note, 
indeed, that the desire to learn the moral lessons of the Holocaust 
dwarf the messages of hate perpetuated by the Holocaust deniers.
  Mr. President, I wish to close with two more quotes. Again from 
Professor Lipstadt:

       Holocaust denial . . . is not an assault on the history of 
     one particular group. Though denial of the Holocaust may be 
     an attack on the history of the annihilation of the Jews, at 
     its core it poses a threat to all who believe that knowledge 
     and memory are among the keystones of our civilization. Just 
     as the Holocaust was not a tragedy of the Jews but a tragedy 
     of civilization in which the victims were Jews, so too denial 
     of the Holocaust is not a threat just to Jewish history but a 
     threat to all who believe in the ultimate power of reason. It 
     repudiates reasoned discussion the way the Holocaust 
     repudiated civilized values. It is undeniably a form of anti-
     Semitism, and such it constitutes an attack on the most basic 
     values of a reasoned society. Like any form of prejudice, it 
     is irrational animus that cannot be countered with normal 
     forces of investigation, argument, and debate.

  And now, from an article by the current executive director of the 
Holocaust Memorial Museum, Dr. Walter Reich, who wrote a few years ago:

       The devastating truth about the Holocaust is that it was a 
     fact, not a dream. And the devastating truth about the 
     Holocaust deniers is that they will go on using whatever 
     falsehoods they can muster, and taking advantage of whatever 
     vulnerabilities in an audience they can find, to argue, with 
     skill and evil intent, that the Holocaust never happened. By 
     being vigilant to these arguments we can all fight this 
     second murder of the Jews--fight it, and weep not only for 
     the victims' mortality but also for the fragility, and 
     mortality, of memory.

  Mr. President, we are nearing the end of a bloody century, littered 
with so many man-made catastrophes that it invites a numbing 
relativism. Today, on ``the night of broken glass,'' let the legacy of 
the victims strengthen our memories and sharpen our consciences to 
remain ever vigilant to the profoundly compelling and universally 
resonant moral lessons of the Holocaust.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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