[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 56 (Monday, May 5, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E830]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



[[Page E830]]

                 YOM HASHOAH; REMEMBERING THE HOLOCAUST

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. WALTER H. CAPPS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 1, 1997

  Mr. CAPPS. Mr. Speaker, this Sunday, May 4 is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust 
Remembrance Day. This solemn day caps off a week in which memorial 
events have been held in every corner of our Nation, including the city 
of Santa Barbara, which I am proud to represent.
  Some may ask why, more than half a century after the Holocaust, we 
need to continue these commemorations? My response is that it is our 
sacred duty. Fifty years after World War II, or 500 years later, it 
will be incumbent upon us to do all that we can to learn the lessons of 
this terrible era and teach them to future generations so that such a 
catastrophe will never befall the Jewish people--or any people--again.
  Nothing we can ever do will bring the 6 million who were murdered 
back to life. Nothing we can do or say will ever heal the searing 
wounds of those who survived. For them, the numbers burned into their 
arms and their other physical and emotional scars are a daily painful 
reminder of their suffering. But we can endow the sacrifices of the 
victims, living and dead, with everlasting significance if we undertake 
remembrance events in our community.
  In my district, I was honored to participate in the opening of a 
remarkable exhibition in Santa Barbara featuring the art and sculpture 
of Theresienstadt. This breathtaking exhibit is sponsored by the Hillel 
Foundation of UCSB, the Jewish Community Relations Committee of the 
Santa Barbara Jewish Federation, the Santa Barbara County Arts 
Commission, the College of Creative Studies at UCSB, and the Austrian 
Cultural Institute of New York.
  This event was particularly enlightening because it reminds us of the 
remarkable power of the visual arts to teach, to inspire, to move us.
  I've joined my friends and neighbors in Santa Barbara at Yom Hashoah 
commemorations for many years, but this time was the first that I stood 
before them as their Congressman, with new obligations and new 
opportunities.
  As a Congressman, I will be able to represent my community at the 
annual Yom Hashoah event in the Rotunda of our Nation's Capital on May 
8.
  As a Congresman, I saw the need to respond to the unwise and 
outrageous comments of one of my colleagues who criticized the airing 
of ``Schindler's List'' as ``polluting the minds of our children'' by 
organizing my own letter, signed by 40 Members, in support of this 
historic broadcast.
  As a Congresman, I will proudly support the continuing Federal 
funding of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which has helped fulfill 
our obligation to teach the lessons of the Holocaust to millions.
  As a Congressman, I am supporting legislation to unlock, once and for 
all, the secret files on Nazi war criminals still being shielded by 
certain agencies of the U.S. Government because of outdated cold war 
national security concerns.
  And as a Congressman, and particularly as a member of the Committee 
on International Relations, I will vote and speak up for continued U.S. 
assistance for the Jewish State, Israel, a state literally created out 
of the ashes of the Holocaust. Whatever the ups and downs of its 
internal political machinations, it is a moral, strategic and 
diplomatic imperative for the U.S. to support Israel and advance the 
cause of peace in the Middle East.
  Mr. Speaker, before I came to Congress, I was a professor of 
religion. For many years, I taught my students the extraordinary book 
``Night'' by Elie Wiesel, America's voice of conscience. Among 
Professor Weisel's most incisive observations is that when an event, 
like the Holocaust is unspeakable, it takes a while to learn the right 
words.
  We will never learn all the right words to describe and explain the 
Holocaust. Yet by taking time each year to remember the dead, honor the 
living, and absorb the lessons of the Nazi era, will we add meaning to 
our own lives and those of future generations.

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