[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 42 (Tuesday, April 16, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2718-S2719]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                   HOLOCAUST EDUCATION ASSISTANCE ACT

 Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I rise today, during these Days of 
Remembrance, to remind my colleagues about those who perished, but also 
those who persevered, in the unimaginable atrocities of the Holocaust.
  Through remembering the Holocaust and teaching generation after 
generation about the atrocities that occurred over 60 years ago, we can 
help ensure that such tragedies do not repeat themselves. General 
Dwight D. Eisenhower recognized this long ago. After visiting the 
Ohrdruf concentration camp in 1945, General Dwight Eisenhower arranged 
for mass witnessing of the camps by military, press reporters, and 
photographers. ``Let the world see,'' ordered Eisenhower. He realized 
that the world must bear witness to the atrocities of the Holocaust, 
and that it was necessary to teach our children about what had 
happened.
  To help make sure that future generations continue to learn about and 
remember the Holocaust, my friend and colleague from Connecticut, 
Senator Dodd, and I introduced a bill last week, called the ``Holocaust 
Education Assistance Act.'' Our new bill would authorize two million 
dollars for grants to schools and school districts to develop a 
curriculum that teaches our students about the Holocaust, the triumph 
of the Jewish people, and all who helped them persevere.
  At the same time, it is also important to teach our children about 
the thousands of individuals, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who took a 
stand against the persecution and killing of innocent people. I am 
reminded today of an obituary I read in the New York Times a couple of 
years ago, of a man named Jan Karski, who was one of the first to stand 
up to the injustice of the Holocaust. I am reminded of the role he, and 
many others, played in our modern history. He had a unique view of an 
appalling and shameful era of history. Let me explain.
  During World War II, Jan Karski brought Allied leaders in the West--
at no small risk to his own life--what is believed to be the first 
eyewitness reports of Hitler's indescribable acts of hate and cruelty 
against the Jews. In 1942, Jewish resistance leaders asked Jan, then a 
28-year-old courier for the Polish underground, to be their voice to 
the West--to convey to the Allies an actual eyewitness account of the 
genocide in Europe.
  He readily accepted this dreadful task, because he knew that someone 
had to tell the world exactly what was happening in Europe. Though he 
succeeded in relaying the nightmarish stories to Western leaders, his 
reports were met initially by indifference. While many others would 
eventually confirm Jan's horrifying accounts of the Jewish 
concentration camps and the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland, he was one of the 
first, and one of very few, to take action against these atrocities.
  We are discovering that Jan was not the only witness to the slaughter 
of innocent civilians by Nazi Germany. We are learning more about the 
atrocities of the Holocaust through thousands and thousands of pages of 
previously classified material about Nazi war criminals, persecution, 
and looting. This information is being made available by a dedicated 
group of individuals, both in government and in the private sector, who 
are working hard to declassify these important pieces of history. This 
effort is the result of the ``Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act'' 
legislation passed and signed into law with the help of my friends and 
colleagues from New York, Senator Patrick Moynihan and Congresswoman 
Carolyn Maloney.
  The documents that are now public can serve as tools for education, 
to teach our children the horrors of the Holocaust, so that it will 
never be repeated.
  Jan Karski persevered, but for the rest of his life, he carried the 
sights, the sounds, the smells, and the sadness of the Holocaust with 
him. Karski, himself, once said: ``This sin will haunt humanity to the 
end of time. It does haunt me. And, I want it to be so.''
  Jan Karski wanted us all to be haunted by the Holocaust. He wanted us 
never to forget. He devoted his life to ensuring that such inhumane 
horror would be present forever in our collective conscience, so that 
we, above all else, would never let this dark chapter in our history 
ever, ever repeat, itself.
  To understand the Holocaust is to remember the lives of those who 
perished and those who resisted, to remember, ``always remember,'' as 
Jan would say, what their sacrifices meant, and still mean, for our 
world. Stories such as Jan Karski's should never be forgotten and the 
way to ensure that is through education.

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