[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 42 (Thursday, April 10, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2963-S2965]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       REMEMBERING THE HOLOCAUST

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, this month we observe the 52d 
anniversary of the beginning of the end of World War II, and the 
liberation of victims of the Holocaust in Europe. Just 2 years ago, the 
50th anniversary of the war's end, there were many ceremonies, 
memorials, books, articles, and television programs marking the events 
of 1945. Now, much of the world's attention seems focused on the coming 
millennium, and the beginning of the 21st century.
  But we must not allow ourselves to forget those events of the 20th 
century that continue to shape our lives. And we must never allow 
humanity to forget the awful truth of the Holocaust, for if we do, we 
risk unleashing the horror of that time on the world once again. The 
act of remembrance becomes more difficult with each passing year, for 
there remain fewer and fewer eyewitnesses to history. Fewer survivors 
of the Holocaust remain. Fewer

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liberators are alive to tell what they saw with their own eyes.
  And so it falls upon us, the children of the survivors and the 
liberators, the victims and the witnesses, to carry this burden into 
the new century, to tell our own children all we know about the horrors 
visited upon the world a little more than five decades ago, and to pray 
that what is our history remains history.
  Mr. President, a short while ago, a distinguished American statesman, 
Paul Wolfowitz, said, ``Our goal, as we enter the 21st century, is to 
make sure that it does not repeat the 20th century,'' which is to say 
the two world wars, the cold war, and all that occurred within it.
  Today, I wish to speak briefly about one event in the history of the 
Holocaust and World War II, and that is the liberation of Dachau, the 
anniversary of which falls less than 3 weeks from today. And I will do 
so in the words of the 42d Rainbow Infantry Division's ``History of 
World War II,'' written shortly after the war's end:

       That word, Dachau, is one which few men of the Rainbow will 
     ever forget. They had heard of Nazi concentration camps and 
     believed or half-believed the stories of the SS atrocities 
     and brutalities conducted in them. Soon they were to see the 
     most famous of all German horror prisons. The oldest such 
     camp in Germany, its very name was feared. Men and women who 
     entered those massive stone gates as prisoners never came 
     out. Inside them was practiced systematic murder. Men who had 
     seen friends die and witnessed all the horrors or war were to 
     turn pale and sick at what they saw at Dachau . . .
       As the first American entered the prison the 33,000 inmates 
     went wild with joy and at the same time joined in the battle 
     against the SS, some of whom had changed into prisoners 
     striped uniform in an attempt to escape.
       The first hysterical group to see the Americans rushed and 
     were pushed into an electrified fence which surrounded the 
     principal enclosure and several of them were killed. As the 
     Americans entered the enclosure they rushed to them and tried 
     to throw their arms around them. . . .
       The men of the Second Battalion began moving through the 
     camp. Everywhere they saw sights which filled them with 
     horror.
       Drawn up on sidings outside the camp itself they found 50 
     boxcars, each one filled with about 30 men who had either 
     starved to death in these cars or had been killed by the 
     machine guns of the guards when they tried to escape. . . .
       In the camp itself there were bodies everywhere. The 
     majority of the guards had fled the night before the 
     Rainbowmen arrived, but before they left they had roamed 
     through the camp killing important prisoners or persons 
     against whom they bore a grudge. . . . Then the guards 
     decided this method was too slow and they turned their 
     machine guns on the inmates. Before they stopped and fled 
     they had killed more than 2,000 in an orgy of murder. Inmates 
     of the camp had gathered these bodies into piles, stacking 
     them up like cordwood. . . .
       Toward the end [of the war] . . . the Nazis had run out of 
     coal and had no way to cremate the bodies, but still the 
     business of murder by gas continued and hundreds of others 
     died of starvation. These bodies the Rainbowmen found dumped 
     into open graves or thrown into the moat until they dammed 
     the water. The stench of the camp was nauseating and in the 
     huts in which the inmates lived the odor was overpowering. 
     Beaten, tortured and starved by the guards, some of these 
     people had become little more than animals. . . .
       Dachau was a nightmare to all the men of the Division who 
     saw it . . . but it was also a lesson. ``Now I know why we 
     are fighting,'' man after man said. ``The Nazis who conceived 
     such a place as that were madmen and those people who 
     operated it were insane. We cannot live in the same world 
     with them. . . .''

  Mr. President, I have had the honor of meeting some of the veterans 
of the Rainbow Division, and they have always carried with them the 
terrible memory of Dachau. And yet, as heroic as their work in fighting 
the Nazis and liberating the victims of the Holocaust was, to a man 
they deny any special attention. Like so many men of their generation 
who did their duty, they simply say, ``we had a job to do, and we did 
it.'' In so doing, they defended not only the security of the United 
States of America. They demonstrated that to be human was to be capable 
of great acts of courage and goodness, even in the face of unspeakable 
cowardice and evil.
  Mr. President, I have had the honor of meeting several of the 
veterans of that Rainbow Division, and they have always carried with 
them terrible memories of Dachau. Yet, as heroic as their work in 
fighting Nazis and liberating the victims of the Holocaust was, to a 
man they denied any special attention. They pushed it aside like so 
many men in our generation who did their duty. They simply say over and 
over again, ``We had a job to do and we did it.'' In so doing, they 
defended not only the security of the United States of America; they 
demonstrated that to be human was to be capable of great acts of 
courage and goodness, even in the face of unspeakable cowardice and 
evil.
  Mr. President, in closing, I would like to make special mention of 
two people involved in this one story of the Holocaust and the 
liberation of Dachau. One is a constituent, Robert T. Kennedy, of 
Wallingford, CT, who at age 32 was drafted into the Army, in part 
because of his expertise in radio technology, and despite the fact he 
had a heart condition. Like so many others of his generation, he 
answered the call of duty, even though it meant leaving his wife, 
Beatrice, and 6-month-old son, Bobby, at home. Young Bob was nearly 3 
when his dad finally returned from the war. Sergeant Kennedy was a 
member of the Rainbow Division, and he witnessed the horrors of Dachau. 
And he made sure to tell his children all about the concentration camp, 
even at an age when they could barely grasp its meaning. He spoke of 
the rage he and his fellow soldiers felt for those who made torture and 
murder a way of life, and he told of how the men of the Rainbow forced 
the civilian townspeople of Dachau to march up to the nearby camp and 
see for themselves what most, if not all, of them surely must have 
known was occurring for so many years. Sergeant Kennedy passed away in 
1976, but the memory of his service lives on in the hearts of his 
family.
  Another person who was there, in that same dark corner of the Earth 
at the same moment in history as Sergeant Kennedy and the men of the 
Rainbow Division, was Ella Wieder, an inmate first at Auschwitz, and 
then at Dachau-Allach, a subcamp of Dachau also liberated at the end of 
April 1945. Apparently, it was her work as a slave laborer that, 
fortunately, stood in the way of her termination long enough for her to 
survive the Holocaust. After the war she returned to her native 
Czechoslovakia, and met Rabbi Samuel Freilich. They married, and soon 
thereafter gave birth to a daughter, Hadassah, who is my wife, and the 
mother of our child, Nana.

  Mr. President, I tell this story with some feeling today particularly 
because for the last 17 years Sgt. Robert Kennedy's son, Jim Kennedy, 
has been my spokesman, my press secretary, my communications director, 
my muse, and, best of all, my friend.
  Tomorrow, after these 17 years in the movement of life that is 
inevitable, Jim Kennedy, who for the first time is sitting by my side 
on the floor, is leaving the service of the U.S. Government, and, more 
particularly, work at my own office, to go on to a wonderful 
opportunity in the private sector in New York.
  I cannot thank him enough, and I appreciate the opportunity to do so 
publicly, not just for the extraordinary eloquence and hard work that 
he has brought to our work together but to the profound sense of values 
carrying on the heroism of his father and his family that he has 
brought to his work with me, to his personal life, to his marriage, and 
to his fatherhood. I cannot thank him enough. I will miss him. But I 
wish him all of God's blessings in the years ahead.
  I know that, though we will not be working together, our friendship 
will go on for as long as the Good Lord gives us the opportunity to be 
alive on this Earth.
  Mr. President, life goes on, despite the efforts of the Nazis and so 
many others to snuff it out. With this tremendous yearning and quest to 
realize the rights that our Constitution and Declaration of 
Independence enshrines to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness 
we prevail. And with those rights, however, comes the responsibility of 
caring for the lives of others. That means remembering the past and its 
shameful secrets in a way that secures a more hopeful future. It means 
carrying forth the lessons of the 20th century into the 21st, and 
telling the stories of the heroes, like Sgt. Kennedy, and the villains 
of this time in hopes that future generations will never know the 
enormous terror that once ruled in the dismal environs of Dachau not so 
long ago. And it means being grateful to all those here at the

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Senate, like Jim Kennedy who helped people like me give service to the 
public, and hopefully in that service make this a freer, better country 
and world.
  I thank you, Mr. President, and I yield the floor.
  Mr. SMITH of Oregon addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I request 10 minutes as part of 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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