[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 46 (Thursday, April 23, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3529-S3530]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
COMMEMORATING THE U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM
Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, today is a holy day, Yom Hashoah. It is a
day set aside every year to remember the victims of the Holocaust.
I had the privilege of starting this Yom Hashoah morning with an
extraordinary group of people, the Founders of the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum. Founders are men and women from across America who
have given at least $1 million to the Holocaust Museum.
This week, as we mark the fifth anniversary of the opening of the
museum, it seems an especially appropriate time to recognize the
incredible gift the Founders, and all the museum's supporters, have
given our nation.
We are indebted to them all--particularly to Miles Lerman, chairman
of the museum council, and Ruth Mandel, the council's vice chair, and
to my dear friend Abe Pollin, the chairman of this year's Founders
Reunion.
One of the sages of the Torah told us more than 200 years ago that
God could have created plants that would grow loaves of bread. Instead,
he created wheat for us to grow and mill and transform into bread. Why?
Because He wanted us to be able to take part in the miracle of
creation.
That is what the Holocaust Museum Founders have done. They used stone
and steel and sacred artifacts, rather than wheat. But they have
unquestionably experienced the miracle of creation.
Simon Dubrow, the great Jewish historian, was one of the 6 million
Jews murdered in the Holocaust. He was killed in the Latvian ghetto of
Riga by a Gestapo officer who had once been his student. His dying
words were ``Schreibt und farschreibt.'' ``Write and record.'' He
believed to the end that truth and memory ultimately would triumph over
the evil of the Holocaust.
Through the leadership and generosity of the Holocaust Museum
Founders, his prediction has come true. Many in Congress remain in awe
of the fact that the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has raised $320
million since its inception. That's a part of the museum's story that
isn't fully known or appreciated.
The Holocaust Museum has not only demonstrated that public/private
partnerships can work--it has set the standard for such partnerships.
Much has changed since that bitter cold, rainy day 5 years ago when the
Holocaust Museum was dedicated.
Before the museum opened, I understand that the most optimistic
estimates were that 700,000 people a year would walk through its doors.
That first year, and every year since, I am now told, 2 million
visitors have come to the museum--5,000 people every day. Before the
museum opened, I well remember that there were some who questioned
whether it should be built on the National Mall, since the Holocaust
did not take place in our country.
Today, the Holocaust Memorial Museum is a fundamental part of this
city. Not only does it belong on the Mall, but it gives a deeper
meaning to the other great memorials there. Ask anyone who has been
through the museum and they will tell you. The Washington Monument and
the Lincoln Memorial have never looked so beautiful--and freedom and
democracy have never seemed as precious--as they do when you emerge
from the darkness of that extraordinary building.
Elie Weisel has said, ``Survivors are understood by survivors only.
They speak in code. All outsiders could do was come close to the
gates.'' That is what the Holocaust Memorial Museum allows us to do: to
come close to the gates; to see; to grieve; and, finally, to learn, so
that we can pass the knowledge on from, generation to generation, about
what can happen when intolerance and hatred are allowed to spread
unchecked.
Elie Weisel is right. We cannot walk on the shoes of the victims, or
the survivors. But we can see their shoes--that heartbreaking room full
of dress shoes and work boots and baby shoes. And it is one of the many
paradoxes of the museum, that in looking at something as simple as
those shoes, we can begin to feel the profound tragedy of that terrible
time.
Anyone who has been there knows, the Holocaust Museum is not an easy
place to visit. The images in it are not images of beauty, but of
incomprehensible evil. People always spend longer in the museum than
they expect. And they leave shattered. But they also leave changed. It
is one of the few museums in the world that has the capacity to change
people fundamentally.
It teaches many lessons. One of the most profound lessons is about
the horrors that can be unleashed when we deny the basic humanity of
even one person. Another is what can happen to democracy when we are
not vigilant in its protection.
The museum also teaches us about the necessity of leadership
dedicated to preventing intolerance, hatred and oppression. For members
of Congress, that is an especially important lesson. And the presence
of the museum on the mall is a constant reminder of it.
Perhaps the most dramatic example of its influence on Congress was 2
years
[[Page S3530]]
ago, when we debated how the United States should respond to the
horrors in Bosnia. There were times during that debate when it was as
if the victims of the Holocaust were looking down from the Senate
galleries, reminding us of the moral imperative: Never again. I doubt
we would have felt their presence so strongly, had it not been for the
museum.
But evil is not always as obvious as it was in Bosnia, or Rwanda, or
Pol Pot's Cambodia. The Holocaust Museum reminds us that the early
warning signs are more subtle--and, often, closer to home. That lesson
is particularly important for people who are entrusted to write the
laws that guide this great nation.
When you walk down that first long, dark corridor, and see the step-
by-step dismantling of German democracy, you understand in a deeper way
why we must never again allow books to be burned, or laws to be written
that permit discrimination and expropriation.
The last time I visited the museum I stopped on the way out to read
what people had written in the ``comments'' book. None of the comments
was very long. The museum has a way of leaving many people without
words for a while.
Among the short messages, there were two that especially stood out.
Both were written in what appeared to be the handwriting of teenage
girls. One said, ``The museum taught me the meaning of democracy.'' The
other said simply, ``I will remember this for the rest of my life.''
What an extraordinary gift the Founders have given those young women,
and everyone else who has visited these first 5 years!
I understand the museum is now taking advantage of the Internet and
other new technologies so that people in my home state of South Dakota,
and all over the world, can ``visit,'' even if they can't come to
Washington. I've been told the website gets 100,000 hits a day! That's
most impressive.
By reaching out in this way, the museum is not only fulfilling our
moral responsibility to ``write and record'' the story of the Holocaust
and its victims. It is also creating a stronger America. And, in the
process, it is redefining what museums, and public-private partnerships
can be, and what they can accomplish.
The poem that is written on the wall behind the shoes declares, ``We
are the shoes. We are the last witnesses.'' In the 5 years since the
museum opened, 10 million new witnesses have been created--one for
every person who perished in the Holocaust. Five years from now, there
will be 10 million more. And, like the young woman who signed the book,
each of them will be remembered for the rest of their lives.
The Founders, and all the supporters of the Holocaust Museum, have
indeed taken part in the creation of something very, very rare. Today,
on this holy day of Yom Hashoah, as we remember the victims of the
Holocaust, the Congress and the people of the United States thank them.
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