[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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