[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 154 (Thursday, November 4, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2268]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE CEREMONY AT CRESSKILL JUNIOR-SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

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                           HON. MARGE ROUKEMA

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, November 4, 1999

  Mrs. ROUKEMA. Mr. Speaker, I rise to call attention to a Holocaust 
remembrance ceremony that will take place tomorrow at Cresskill Junior-
Senior High School in Cresskill, NJ, and to commend those involved in 
organizing this event.
  Definitively, the Holocaust was one of the darkest chapters in the 
history of our world. However, words cannot begin to express the horror 
and inhumanity of this unforgivable crime against humanity. It is 
vitally important that we remember the Holocaust, no matter how painful 
and horrifying those memories may be. Remembering the Holocaust is the 
best way to ensure that it never happens again. To quote George 
Santayana, ``Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat 
it.''
  At Cresskill Junior-Senior High School tomorrow, students and faculty 
will gather to remember the Holocaust, passing on the memories to a new 
generation who will, in turn, pass them on to their children and 
grandchildren. This will not be a mere academic exercise or a lesson in 
distant history, however. Approximately 20 survivors of the Nazi 
Holocaust--along with survivors of some more recent genocides around 
the world--will be on hand to tell their stories firsthand.
  Tomorrow's event was organized at the urging of Lara Pomerantz, a 15-
year-old sophomore at Cresskill. Lara is an outstanding young woman who 
led the efforts that resulted in Governor Whitman declaring the first 
week of November as Holocaust Education Week in New Jersey. She then 
worked with former principal Henry McNally and current principal Wayne 
Merckling to organize the school event.
  Why does a 15-year-old from New Jersey have such a strong interest in 
events that occurred half a world away 40 years before she was born? 
Lara has a close personal link to the Holocaust and good reason to 
remember. As Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, her maternal grandparents--
Abraham and Regina Tauber--narrowly escaped the Holocaust. After 
spending the war years on the run, in hiding and as members of the 
Resistance, they returned to their hometown of Chodel, Poland, to find 
only 11 Jewish members of that entire community alive--11 individuals 
out of 950.
  Mr. and Mrs. Tauber will be at Cresskill Junior-Senior High tomorrow 
to support their granddaughter and tell their story to her classmates. 
In a letter to me, Lara said, ``My life is a living testament to their 
will to survive.'' No words could be more inspiring to each 
generation--present and future.
  By telling their stories to this gathering of teenagers, the Taubers 
and other Holocaust survivors will keep the memory alive for another 
generation--not just as words on a textbook page but as the story of 
someone these young people have actually met. Their efforts will show 
another generation that the victims of the Holocaust were not just 
abstract numbers or strangers--they are members of our families, the 
parents and grandparents of our friends.
  We all know the famous words of Martin Niemoeller, the Lutheran 
minister who resisted Hitler. ``I didn't speak up because I wasn't a 
Communist . . . I wasn't a Jew . . . I wasn't a trade unionist.'' If 
the world does not remember the Holocaust, there could come a time for 
each of us when we would be faced with Reverend Niemoeller's final 
line: ``Then they came for me and no one was left to speak up for me.''
  I ask my colleagues in the House of Representatives to join me in 
congratulating the students and faculty of Cresskill Junior-Senior High 
School--and the Holocaust survivors who are joining them--on this 
effort to see that history does not repeat itself.

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