[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 53 (Thursday, April 22, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H2342]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL AND REMEMBRANCE PROGRAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Berkley) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. BERKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I am here on the floor to talk about an 
extraordinary event that took place in our Nation's Capital today and 
what it signifies to me.
  I attended the Holocaust Memorial and Remembrance Program that took 
place in the dome of the United States Capitol. I was struck by two 
different feelings as I sat there and I listened to one extraordinary 
remembrance and speech after another. The first was, of course, that 
feeling that always startles me; that man's inhumanity to man knows no 
bounds, and that a mere 60 years ago 6 million Jews were exterminated 
throughout the world. Their only transgression was the fact that they 
were Jewish.
  I was also struck by the incredible fact that 60 years after this 
most heinous episode in our civilized world's history, that there we 
were, generation after generation after generation of survivors, those 
that survived, their children, their grandchildren, and their great-
grandchildren, all gathered under the dome of the United States 
Capitol, the very seat of power, the most important and strongest 
Nation in the world. And here we have a seat at the table where we are 
welcomed, where we are valued as citizens, and where we have an 
opportunity to participate in our government as we have never been able 
to participate before. Here we gather not only to remember those that 
lost their lives in the Holocaust, but to ensure that something that 
happened 60 years ago could never ever happen again.
  I am second-generation American. My grandparents walked across Europe 
to come to this country. My mother's side of the family comes from 
Salonika, Greece. Prior to World War II, prior to the Nazis, there were 
80,000 Jews in Salonika. By the time the Nazis finished, there were 
merely 1,000 left. I am not presumptuous enough to think I would have 
been among the 1,000 selected to live.
  On my father's side, the Russia-Poland side, there were no towns, no 
Jews. Hundreds and hundreds of years of a rich culture and civilization 
obliterated, exterminated in the course of the Second World War.
  When my grandparents came to this country, they could not speak the 
language, they had no money, they had no skills, but they had a dream, 
and that dream was that their children and their children's children 
would lead a better life here in the United States than they had where 
they came from. My grandparents, who could not speak English, have a 
granddaughter who serves in the United States House of Representatives. 
It does not get better than that.
  Last year, I had an opportunity to go back to Greece, back to 
Salonika to meet with the 1,000 Jews that survived and their children 
and grandchildren. I was there to help rededicate the Holocaust 
memorial, and I remember standing there in a beautiful plaza with Greek 
Orthodox and Jewish Greeks knowing that if my grandparents had not 
gotten out when they did, that memorial would have been to them, and I 
would not exist.
  So for those who organized this extraordinary day of remembrance, to 
all those that spoke, to everybody that participated, and to all our 
fellow countrymen, let me give you a hearty and heartfelt thank you for 
giving me the opportunity I have to live in this incredible country, 
but also tasking me with a responsibility that future generations of 
our world citizens will never, never have to go through what this world 
went through 60 years ago.

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