[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 77 (Friday, June 4, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1041]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   SPEECH BY HUNGARIAN PRESIDENT FERENC MADL AT OPENING OF HUNGARIAN 
              HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL AND DOCUMENTATION CENTER

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, June 3, 2004

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on April 15, 2004, the Holocaust Memorial 
and Documentation Center in Budapest, Hungary, was opened at a solemn 
ceremony attended by the President of Hungary, the President of Israel, 
and a number of other distinguished official guests.
  With the establishment of an official Holocaust Memorial, the 
government of Hungary has formally acknowledged the responsibility of 
Hungarian governments in the 1930s and 1940s and of Hungarian citizens 
for atrocities committed during the Holocaust in Hungary. In the past 
it has been fashionable for Hungarians to blame the German Nazis for 
the atrocities of that era. Unfortunately, many Hungarian citizens were 
complicit with the Nazis in committing atrocities, and the Hungarian 
Arrow Cross organization was as vicious and brutal as the German Nazis 
in their despicable deeds.
  Mr. Speaker, the timing of the opening of the Hungarian Holocaust 
Memorial and Documentation Center is particularly appropriate, because 
this year marks the 60th Anniversary of the darkest days for Hungarians 
during WWII. It was on March 19, 1944, that the German army occupied 
Hungary, and German officials began the systematic effort to 
exterminate Hungary's Jewish population. Over half a million Hungarian 
Jews were deported and met their deaths in Nazi gas chambers, the 
largest portion of them at Auschwitz.
  It is my sincere hope, Mr. Speaker, that the opening of this Memorial 
in Budapest will teach future generations of Hungarians that 
intolerance, racism, hatred and bigotry have no place in the free and 
open and democratic society that Hungary is becoming.
  Mr. Speaker, perhaps the most moving statement at the Holocaust 
Memorial dedication was that given by the President of Hungary, Ferenc 
Madl, who headed the long list of dignitaries at the ceremony and 
presided at the opening of the Memorial. President Madl's speech was 
moving and eloquent. I ask that it be placed in the Record and I urge 
my colleagues to give it thoughtful attention.

       Distinguished commemorating community: What we are 
     remembering here should never have happened. The building we 
     are standing in used to be a synagogue. It is a sacred place, 
     not only because it was a place of worship, but also because 
     over the time it has become a venue for remembrance. Human 
     suffering--the suffering of people--the remembrance of 
     unforgettable pain, the pain felt by millions of people makes 
     this place sacred. Commemorations and writings all discuss 
     the genocide of the Jewish people as an event of historic 
     tragedy. There is however something more important than 
     history: man himself. Thus for this reason, the Holocaust is 
     not simply ``history'' but the past of a whole generation. It 
     is here with us in many different ways in the fate of Jews 
     and non-Jews alike. Every life is a complete world in itself. 
     Every deceased person has a unique face. This uniqueness 
     tends to get lost in history. We cannot experience the extent 
     of the tragedy in a thousand or one hundred thousand 
     different ways. Individually however, we all have--direct or 
     indirect--personal memories of those who perished. It is in 
     these memories that the indescribable horror gains a face of 
     its own.
       This venue of remembrance is required to help preserve the 
     personal touch in us, which tends to fade with time. If 
     hundreds of thousands of people suffering is a mere piece of 
     data for someone, then being faced with but a single real 
     story of fate, will ensure that this person will never be 
     ignorant of our common past. Remembrance shall elevate the 
     Holocaust into a personal drama.
       Distinguished remembering community, nowadays the depths of 
     the tragedy, the numbers, are mentioned more frequently than 
     its human-spirit content. Perhaps numbers with their abstract 
     nature are not so painful for our conscience.
       It is human nature to flee from pain. If numbers call up 
     individual faces and fates then the burden of looking to the 
     past becomes almost unbearable. We should not shun this 
     burden away.
       We do not only need to remember, because a parent, child, 
     brother and sister sent to their deaths are there in our 
     hearts and souls or for sinners to gain absolution from their 
     sins, but to make sure that we are vigilant of the sins of 
     past horrors haunting us again somewhere.
       In 1938 Hungarian writer Milan Fust wrote that lifting 
     inhumanity to the level of law is without precedent, just as 
     the fact that the human kind ``should approve its own sadism 
     so much, that it should be proud of its animal like nature.''
       Nobel laureate Imre Kertesz in the blinding light of 
     survival saw in Auschwitz the symbol of moral status of 
     humanity in the 20th century. Is the moral state that made 
     the Holocaust possible now a thing of the past? We can see 
     that mad dictators still commit mass killings among their own 
     people, even today. We can find contemporary examples of 
     genocide too. How horrible, that humankind has not managed to 
     this day, to reach the moral level, where the commandment 
     ``Thou shall not kill'' binds the hands of every Cain. How 
     many times do we see the strangling sorrow among us over the 
     lack of love? How many times are we still obliged to 
     extinguish the brushfires of racial, religious, political and 
     ethnic hatred here and in many corners of the world?
       This place of remembrance is not in a randomly selected 
     spot of the world, but in Hungary, in Budapest, not far from 
     where the ghetto was established in the dark period of 1944. 
     This place of remembrance does not speak generally about 
     inhumanity, brutality, about lowly instincts, the 
     institutionalized system of murder somewhere else, but here, 
     where we are, where all that we are discussing happened.
       Although the final chapter of the tragedy may have taken 
     place elsewhere, this does not change the fact that all this 
     was made possible here. This is where the guilty accomplices 
     lived; this is where the guilty ignorance of those not 
     involved prevailed. It is no excuse to say that the world too 
     remained silent. All this happened here. We lacked the will 
     to resist here. We failed to extend a helping hand here. This 
     is what makes the tragedy our personal issue, a spiritual 
     burden for all of us. It is here that we have to rely on the 
     faith we have in conciliation, to remember all those who 
     perished and to apologize to our surviving brothers and 
     sisters.
       Being present here today is not only to remember and show 
     solidarity, but also to express our national and human 
     repentance. When quoting Miklos Radnoti, we say that ``we are 
     guilty like all other nations'', we use the words of a 
     Hungarian poet, who in his poems adopted all of us as his 
     dear brothers and sisters, only to be marched to his martyr's 
     death because of his provenance.
       This is what makes this tragedy so universal, yet 
     Hungarian. We, the ones living here, should know what 
     happened and how something that should have never taken place 
     actually did happen.
       Distinguished remembering community, this is not a place of 
     remembrance for only the martyred Jews. It is for all of us, 
     the whole Hungarian society. Someone with feelings and 
     thoughts will never have two kinds of dead. We feel the pain 
     of every dead. In World War II, Hungary was one of the 
     countries to suffer the largest loss of its population. Death 
     was victorious in wars and dictatorial regimes. Every 
     exterminated Jew is a loss for humanity; every Hungarian Jew 
     murdered is a loss for all the Hungarian people.
       Jewish martyrs perished amidst the horror of 
     defenselessness and exclusion, deprived of the hope that 
     their individual sacrifice can help the survival of the 
     community. The incomparable horror of the Holocaust lies in 
     this.
       Today we remember them as the loss suffered by all of us 
     Hungarians. We incessantly search for reparation for having 
     them march to their deaths after being torn from the 
     Hungarian society.
       This memorial place reminds us that we need to assume the 
     pain of remembrance again and again in our souls. The 
     catharsis of honest remembrance will make us better, will 
     lend meaning to the day after and will help to look for the 
     integrity of mankind in our communities and in every 
     individual. May the Lord Almighty give us strength for 
     everyone!

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