[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 53 (Thursday, April 22, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E642]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             HOLOCAUST MARTYRS' AND HEROES' REMEMBRANCE DAY

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. MAX SANDLIN

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 22, 2004

  Mr. SANDLIN. Mr. Speaker, last Sunday, April 18, 2004, the people of 
the world memorialized Yom HaShoah--a special day of remembrance 
honoring the martyrs and heroes of the Holocaust. Holocaust Remembrance 
Day is a day that has been set aside to remember the victims of the 
Holocaust and to remind each of us what can happen when bigotry and 
hatred are not confronted.
  Mr. Speaker, I am humbled as I rise today with my colleagues to honor 
the memories and the lives of the more than 6 million victims of Nazi 
hatred and aggression during the pogrom known to us as the Holocaust. I 
am also humbled to stand in this cathedral of freedom and honor the 
lives of the many heroes who fought so bravely against unimaginable 
odds to defeat a genocidal madman.
  More than 60 years ago, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime set out to 
eradicate European Jewry. So committed were they to the accomplishment 
of this goal, their so-called ``Final Solution,'' that even in the 
waning days of World War II, when defeat was imminent, the Germans 
continued rounding up Jews all over Europe and sending them to their 
deaths.
  Mr. Speaker, driven by a radical and uncompromising anti-Semitic 
ideology, the Nazis redoubled their efforts to reach every last Jew 
before the war ended. They were in a rush; time was running out. 
Depleting sorely-needed resources from the war effort, German forces 
swept across Europe, assembling and annihilating community after 
community, individual after individual, from their homes, ghettos and 
hiding places.
  Mr. Speaker, during the last year of the war in Europe, German defeat 
was all but accomplished, and yet their hatred and bigotry survived and 
thrived. Consequently, the Nazis murdered more than 700,000 Jews in the 
last full year of the war, including most of the Jews of the last large 
community in Europe, Hungary. In one of the most efficient deportation 
and murder operations of the Holocaust, the Nazi and Hungarian regimes 
deported 437,000 Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau in just eight weeks, and 
killed tens of thousands more later that year.
  Six decades have passed since Allied troops liberated the labor and 
death camps, and yet the memory of the horrors perpetrated against the 
Jewish people is seared into the collective conscious of the world. 
However, Mr. Speaker, sadly, we cannot undo history, and we cannot 
reverse the atrocities carried out by a barbarous German regime.
  What remains for us is to honor and preserve the memories and lives 
of both the victims and the survivors of the Holocaust. Out of the 
great tragedy of the Holocaust emerges a tremendous object lesson for 
humanity: hatred and bigotry can never be taken for granted or left 
unchecked. We must never forget.
  Mr. Speaker, memory is critical--our own and that of the victims of 
unprecedented evil and suffering. The Holocaust is an era we must 
remember not only because of the dead; it is too late for them. Not 
only because of the survivors; it may even be too late for them. 
Preserving memory is a solemn responsibility, aimed at saving men and 
women from apathy to evil, if not from evil itself. We must never 
forget.
  Mr. Speaker, sixty years ago, much of the world overlooked the deadly 
plight of an entire people until it was almost too late. We have a 
sacred obligation--in order to truly keep faith with the principles 
upon which our great nation was founded--to remain vigilant, to 
remember the horrors of the past, to learn from them, and to protect 
against them for all eternity. We must never forget.
  Mr. Speaker, Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, 
perhaps summed it up best when he said, ``to remain silent and 
indifferent is the greatest sin of all.'' As Americans, we must heed 
his call and embrace his challenge. We must never forget.

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