[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 77 (Thursday, May 30, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E962-E963]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    REMARKS OF SENATOR CHRISTOPHER J. DODD AT THE NATIONAL DAYS OF 
                          REMEMBRANCE CEREMONY

                                 ______


                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 30, 1996

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on April 16, Members of Congress, members of 
the diplomatic corps and hundreds of survivors of the Holocaust and 
their friends gathered here in the Capitol Rotunda for the National 
Days of Remembrance commemoration. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council 
was established by Congress to preserve the memory of the victims of 
the Holocaust. I commend the Council and the members of the Days of 
Remembrance Committee, chaired by my good friend Benjamin Meed, for 
their vigilant and genuine adherence to their extraordinarily important 
task.
  One of the first acts of the Council was to establish the annual Days 
of Remembrance commemoration to mirror similar observances held in 
Israel and throughout our Nation and elsewhere in the world. This year, 
the commemoration centered on the 50th anniversary of the Nuremberg 
trials. The observance was a reminder of the difficult process of first 
coping and then healing that all survivors and their families and loved 
ones had to endure.
  Our colleague from the other body, Senator Christopher Dodd, made a 
memorable speech at this historic ceremony. The Senator draws upon the 
personal experience of his father, Thomas Dodd, who served as a 
prosecutor at Nuremberg, to chronicle the extraordinary task of 
bringing the story of the World War II to light while being true to the 
cause of justice. At a time when the rest of the world looked to 
Nuremberg with the most passionate of feelings, Thomas Dodd was 
enlisted to ignore his feelings in the course of his prosecution so 
that the Nazi war criminals would have the chance to defend themselves 
that none of their victims had. I invite my colleagues to read Senator 
Dodd's remarks and gain a full appreciation of the accomplishments of 
Thomas Dodd and the trials of Nuremberg.

                          Days of Remembrance

                    (By Senator Christopher J. Dodd)

       I stand before you today not only as a Senator and an 
     American, but more profoundly as the son of Thomas Dodd:
       A man who in the summer of 1945 left my mother, myself and 
     my four brothers and sisters and journeyed to a place called 
     Nuremberg.
       My father wasn't asked to shoulder a rifle, fly a plane, or 
     parachute beyond enemy lines.
       His responsibility was not to fellow soldiers or officers.
       My father went to Nuremberg as a prosecutor with a solemn 
     obligation to the victims and the survivors of Nazi 
     atrocities, to see justice prevail over inhumanity.
       And, I stand here before you today to bear witness to my 
     father's experiences at the Nuremberg tribunals 50 years ago. 
     Growing up as a child, my father often spoke to his family 
     about his time in Germany and what he learned of the 
     Holocaust.
       The particulars: Goering and Goebbels, Auschwitz and Dachau 
     were peoples and places with which I became intimately 
     familiar.
       I knew far more about the events of the Holocaust than most 
     people of my generation because my father wanted his children 
     to learn and never forget.
       Today, on this day of remembrance I think back to those 
     early lessons and what my father might say if he were with us 
     today.
       My father left Nuremberg with a greater fervor for the need 
     to uphold freedom and human rights and to speak out against 
     intolerance, and injustice wherever it may rear its head.
       The fifteen months he spent prosecuting Nazi war 
     criminals defined the type of public person he would 
     become and dictated the issues that he so passionately 
     fought for throughout his life.
       The struggles at Nuremberg were not easy ones. My father 
     and all those who were there, were burdened with a grave 
     responsibility:
       To not only punish the guilty but to also reassure the 
     survivors that future generations would never forget the 
     atrocities.
       While these represented arduous challenges, my father and 
     his colleagues at Nuremberg understood their obligations.
       During the fifteen months my father spent in Nuremberg he 
     wrote to my mother every single day. In one particularly 
     poignant letter, he said:
       ``Sometimes a man knows his duty, his responsibility so 
     clearly, so surely he cannot hesitate--he does not refuse it. 
     Even great pain and other sacrifices seem unimportant in such 
     a situation. The pain is no less for this knowledge--but the 
     pain has a purpose at least.''
       And the pain certainly had a purpose.
       Because whatever its legacy on international law, the 
     Nuremberg tribunal permanently enshrined into international 
     diplomacy the notion that the hand of vengeance

[[Page E963]]

     ultimately would be steadied by the rule of law.
       After the surrender of Germany and once the ghastly 
     atrocities of the Holocaust had been revealed to the world 
     there was a natural impulse to lash out in vengeance.
       Some leaders, such as Winston Churchill called for the 
     immediate execution of Nazi leaders, without trial.
       In a sense this furor was quite understandable.
       But, at Nuremberg, the United States and her Allies 
     ended this war the way they had fought it, by embodying. 
     What Abraham Lincoln called, ``The better angels of our 
     nature.''
       When millions of innocent Jews were jammed into boxcars on 
     the way to the railroad sidings at Auschwitz, Treblinka and 
     Dachau to be selected for extermination they weren't granted 
     the right of due process; they weren't granted the right to 
     defend themselves.
       For them, there was no justice, only a ``final solution'' 
     in the crematoriums and gas chambers of the Nazis.
       But at Nuremberg, the allies recognized that the only true 
     antidote to the savagery of the Nazis was justice.
       That's why at Nuremberg defendants were given the right to 
     defend themselves.
       That's why at Nuremberg they were able to choose their own 
     legal representation.
       That's why at Nuremberg they were given the right to speak 
     on their own behalf.
       And that's why at Nuremberg three of the defendants were 
     acquitted.
       Consider the words of Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson 
     in describing these actions:
       ``That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung 
     with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit 
     their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of 
     the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to 
     reason.''
       Recently, looking through my father's letters, I came 
     across a wonderful anecdote from that time.
       After only a few weeks in Germany, my father had the 
     opportunity to go to a baseball game at the very same stadium 
     where, in my father's words, ``Hitler corrupted and misled 
     the youth of Germany.''
       But on that day, in the summer of 1945, the voices of evil 
     that had once reverberated in Nuremberg were replaced by the 
     sounds of 40,000 Americans doing the ``most American of 
     things'';--watching a baseball game.
       Something as wholesome as baseball is, I believe, a 
     wonderful metaphor for the triumph of American optimism and 
     American ideals over the forces of Nazism.
       At Nuremberg, America's commitment to the ideals enshrined 
     in our Constitution remained intact even in the face of 
     unspeakable horror.
       My father felt very deeply that this is the ultimate legacy 
     of Nuremberg; our triumph in arms led to the triumph of our 
     ideals.
       And as we gather to remember the lessons of Nuremberg 50 
     years later, I know that if my father were here it is the 
     legacy of the international rule of law that would be 
     paramount in his mind.
       In closing, I want all of you to take a brief look at this 
     beautiful setting:
       The Rotunda of the Nation's Capitol, the home of the 
     world's greatest democracy.
       The ideals that America so brightly represents; freedom, 
     equality, the rule of law and the rights of man find shelter 
     in these halls.
       It was those principles that served as lodestars for my 
     father and the many participants at Nuremberg.
       And in this time of remembrance, it is those standards that 
     we must commemorate because they represent the true moral and 
     ethical ideals that we defended 50 years ago and which we 
     must continue to strive for as a nation and as a people.

                          ____________________