[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 67 (Thursday, May 25, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H3856-H3857]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO MILES LERMAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to honor Mr. 
Miles Lerman for the great service he has provided this country. Few 
individuals can match the contributions that Mr. Lerman has made in 
creating and shaping the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. His 
efforts in turning a dream into a reality and in the museum's 
achievements under his guidance and leadership represent the apex of an 
extraordinary life. Culminating in his serving on the United States 
Holocaust Memorial Council since its inception in 1980 and as its 
chairman from 1993 until April of this year.
  As a native of Tomaszow, Poland, Mr. Lerman was born into a family 
that had, for 6 generations, operated flour mills near the site of what 
would become the Nazi death camp, Belzec. He was captured by the Nazis 
and imprisoned in a slave labor camp where he was forced to break up 
tombstones taken from a Jewish cemetery, some of them 300 years old, so 
that the Nazis could construct a highway they would use in their 
advancement into the Soviet Union.
  In 1942, he escaped, organized a resistance group, and spent the next 
2 years fighting the Nazis as a partisan in the forests of southeastern 
Poland. Following liberation, he returned home, only to find that his 
mother and some of his siblings had been murdered and that the world of 
his youth had

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been virtually wiped from the map. Of the 8,000 Jews who had lived in 
Tomaszow, only 11 were still alive.
  Lerman married his wife, Chris, an Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor, after 
liberation. Following 8 months in a displaced persons camp, they 
arrived in the United States and eventually settled in Vineland, New 
Jersey.
  In recognition of his contributions to the Holocaust remembrance, in 
1978 he was appointed to the advisory board of President Carter's 
Commission on the Holocaust. At the Commission's first meeting, he 
testified that in 1945, he had searched for the reason for his 
survival. But with the goal of creating a museum, he concluded, I feel 
there was meaning and purpose to my survival in being here today.
  Mr. Lerman quickly became a driving force in the creation of the 
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Following his service on the 
advisory board, he was appointed to the first Memorial Council in 1980. 
He has been reappointed to the council by every President since; and 
with each reappointment, Mr. Lerman has recommitted himself to 3 vital 
goals: building and securing the future of a permanent national living 
memorial to the victims of the Holocaust; establishing the 
international relationships necessary to ensure the museum's 
preeminence in fostering Holocaust documentation, education, and 
scholarship; ensuring the museum's mission of remembrance, education, 
and conscience is transmitted to future generations.
  Mr. Speaker, early on Mr. Lerman recognized that collections would be 
vital to the museum's creation and ultimate success. Through his hard 
work, the museum's collections now number more than 35,000 objects and 
12 million pages of archival documents, in addition to tens of 
thousands of photographs, films, and oral histories.
  Similarly, Mr. Lerman's commitment to Holocaust scholarship led to 
the creation of the Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, 
which promotes research on the Holocaust and ensures the ongoing 
training of future generations of scholars. It incorporates the Lerman 
Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance, founded because Mr. Lerman 
felt strongly that this long-neglected aspect of Holocaust history 
merited more attention.
  Mr. Speaker, let me conclude my remarks by calling attention to the 
words of Senator Robert Kennedy taken from the Congressional Record of 
June 6, 1966, and I quote:

       First is the danger of futility, the belief there is 
     nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous 
     array of the world's ills, against misery and ignorance, 
     injustice, and violence. Yet, many of the world's great 
     movements of thought and action have flowed from the work of 
     a single man.

  Thank you to Miles Lerman for being that single man, for giving so 
much of himself to our country. In leading the effort to create the 
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, not only has he been a guiding 
hand in the establishment of a remarkable national memorial, but in 
doing so, he has also provided a powerful and important reminder to all 
Americans of what can happen when citizens abandon their 
responsibilities to in a democratic society.

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