[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 57 (Tuesday, May 1, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E673]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  TRIBUTE TO PROFESSOR THERKEL STRAEDE

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                          Tuesday, May 1, 2001

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleagues today to join me in 
paying tribute to Professor Therkel Straede, a remarkable scholar who 
has put together an important exhibition of photographs of the rescue 
of Danish Jews in 1943. The exhibition shows how the Danish people 
acted as the keepers of basic human decency and saved almost the entire 
Jewish community of Denmark. At a time when most of Europe was 
oppressed by Nazi tyranny, which was the antithesis of humanity, 
decency, and brotherhood, the Danes showed great humanity despite 
tremendous personal risk.
  Mr. Speaker, since 1995 Dr. Therkel Straede has been a Professor of 
Modern German History and Holocaust Studies at Odense University in 
Denmark. During the period 1988-1992 he was a member of a research team 
at Ruhr-University at Bochum, Germany. There he researched the history 
of the German automobile company Volkswagen A.G., and the use of forced 
labor by Volkswagen during the 3rd Reich. He has recorded testimonies 
of more than a 120 survivors and is producing a monograph on the 
subject.
  Dr. Straede has focused most of his work and studies on the 
Holocaust, and he is a founding member of the Danish National Committee 
for the Counseling of Victims of Nazi German Persecution, Forced Labor 
and Genocide. He has received scholarships at the Technical University 
of Berlin (1986) and the Institute for German History in Tel-Aviv 
(1992). He was a Fulbright visiting researcher at the Georgetown 
University at the Center for German and European Studies in 1998-99 and 
an associate scholar of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at 
the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1999. Currently, Dr. Straede is 
writing a series of articles on a number of German concentration camps 
for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's Encyclopedia of Nazi Camps.
  The traveling exhibit on the rescue of the Danish Jews, of which Dr. 
Straede is the curator, has been displayed in more than 100 locations 
in 27 different countries. On May 2, 2001, it will be on display in the 
Rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building. With the help of Project 
Judaica Foundation Inc., the exhibition will hereafter be on display at 
a number of locations in the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to take a moment out of 
their busy schedules to visit this worthwhile exhibit while it is here 
in Washington at the Russell Rotunda.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to pay tribute to Dr. Therkel Straede for his 
thorough work on the history of Holocaust, and his diligent 
documentation of the details of the Nazi use of slave labor. We can all 
learn a valuable lesson from Dr. Straede's work; even a force of evil 
as powerful as the Nazi regime can be beaten by dedicated people 
committed to common human decency. I believe this is best shown in the 
spontaneous and courageous rescue action of the Danish people in 1943.

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