[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 124 (Wednesday, September 10, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1755-E1756]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   RECOGNIZING THE ARTICLE ``REMEMBERING THE AWESOME LESSONS OF THE 
                              HOLOCAUST''

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. J. RANDY FORBES

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 10, 2003

  Mr. FORBES. Mr. Speaker, I rise to call attention to the article 
``Remembering the Awesome Lessons of the Holocaust'' written by Rabbi 
Israel Zoberman. The article appeared in the Virginian-Pilot and The 
Ledger-Star on Saturday, June 12, 1993.
  Rabbi Zoberman is spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Chaverim in 
Virginia Beach. Born in Chu, Kazakhstan, in 1945, and raised in Haifa, 
Israel, he is the son of Polish Holocaust survivors.

            Remembering the Awesome Lessons of the Holocaust

       Visiting the recently dedicated official United States 
     Holocaust Memorial Museum is not an ordinary experience, nor 
     should it be one.
       Along with fellow Americans, gentiles and Jews from all 
     walks of life, I was conscious of entering upon sacred space. 
     The resultant education experience, through ingenious 
     multimedia presentation and architectural genius, exposes us 
     to the unfolding stages of the Third Reich's evil, allowing 
     us a closer reach to an unfathomable reality.
       We are led on a journey whose consequences of disaster for 
     the Jewish people and for humanity in general become 
     increasingly evident at each turn.
       Hitler's early threats were far from idle. What was 
     dismissed as the political rhetoric of a novice was 
     methodically translated into a program of genocide. Failure 
     to stop the Nazi regime early on yielded the largest harvest 
     of death in history.
       Recognizing that the tragedy's magnitude is such that 
     without personalizing it we risk losing it, we watch a tower 
     of photos depicting the life of an entire community that is 
     no more, from family gatherings and children at play to loved 
     ones and pastoral calm. In two days of mass executions, 3,000 
     Jews, young and old, of Elshishok, Lithuania, where Jews had 
     lived for 900 years, were slain. This was one among more than 
     4,950 destroyed communities.
       Focusing on the shoes of gassed victims, my eye caught one 
     belonging to a child. Who can remain neutral toward a little 
     one's fate?
       The video (hidden from view of those who could not bear it) 
     of the medical experimentations on live subjects--gypsies and 
     twins were favorites--was ample proof of science's 
     culpability and academicians' corruptibility. Yet, the 
     inspiring example of the French village of Chambon, which 
     saved 5,000 Jews, including many children, from round-up and 
     deportation, shines through the darkness.
       Watching on-screen survivors reminisce illustrated the 
     power of witness and the sacred duty to preserve their 
     essential legacy, as age diminishes their numbers, for the 
     sake of those to follow.
       At the tour's beginning one receives a passport of a person 
     who encountered the war. Mine was of a man who expired en 
     route to the Belzec death camp where many members of my own 
     extended family perished. One identity card bears the name of 
     a surviving relative, Gitla Zoberman (now Gertrude Kupfer), 
     who lives in Richmond, Virginia.

[[Page E1756]]

       The museum's honored location in Washington, DC, near our 
     national shrines, reflects the awesome lessons of the 
     Holocaust. It is a grim though necessary reminder that 
     democracy entails eternal vigilance and those revisionists 
     who attempt to rewrite history, claiming that the painful 
     past is a malicious Jewish invention, will have to face 
     life's hard facts.
       The fitting memorial, at a substantial cost of $170 
     million, is an investment in all that we hold dear. It ought 
     to ever arouse humanity's collective conscience, as I 
     agonizingly contemplate the overdue need to put an end to the 
     horrors in the former Yugoslavia.
       I emerged from the trying four-hour visit with a sense of 
     catharsis, cleansed to meet the world with a sharper 
     awareness, to turn my tears into a well of hope for the 
     future of all.

                          ____________________