[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 5 (Tuesday, January 25, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S426-S428]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ

  Mr. SMITH. Mr. President, I rise today to observe a solemn 
anniversary. On January 27, 2005, the world will pause and remember as 
we mark the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the 
most notorious of Nazi Germany's concentration and death camps.
  In 1940, Germany established the Auschwitz concentration camp 37 
miles west of Krakow in Poland. Formerly a Polish Army barracks, 
Auschwitz was first used as a prison for captured Polish soldiers and 
those who were considered by the Nazis to be dangerous. The

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prison held captive the elite of Poland--their civic and spiritual 
leaders, educated classes, cultural and scientific figures, army 
officers, and members of the resistance movement. Throughout World War 
II, Auschwitz continued to be used to house prisoners-of-war, gypsies, 
and others who opposed the Nazi regime.
  In 1942, Germany began to use Auschwitz as one of its principle camps 
to carry out the systematic extermination of Jews across the European 
continent. As the Nazis pursued their horrific ``final solution,'' over 
one million Jews and tens of thousands of others perished at Auschwitz, 
the majority of whom were executed in the infamous gas chambers.
  As the Soviet Army approached at the end of 1944, the Nazis attempted 
to destroy evidence of their atrocities. In late January 1945, the 
Germans evacuated Auschwitz with the SS leading over 50,000 prisoners 
on a death march that eventually claimed the lives of thousands more. 
When the Soviets finally reached the camp, only a few thousand 
prisoners remained alive to see their liberation.
  It was some time before the world knew the extent of the atrocities 
committed at Auschwitz. But as the truth became known, we made the 
promise to never forget what happened there and at other Nazi 
extermination camps. Today, by marking this somber anniversary, we keep 
that promise.
  Yet, it is not enough to simply pause and remember.
  I have walked that ground in Auschwitz. I have felt the weight of the 
air and seen the ruins of the crematoria. It is an unquestionably 
chilling experience that I have trouble expressing in words.
  But I do know and understand the words of Auschwitz survivor and 
Nobel laureate Elie Weisel, who said, ``to remain silent and 
indifferent is the greatest sin of all.'' It is in that spirit that we 
not only recall the horrors perpetrated at Auschwitz, but we work to 
ensure that such unbridled hatred and evil never again goes unchecked.
  So, too, we must recognize that hatred does still exist in the world 
and we see signs of it every day. It is our duty as a free people to 
work against its growth and fight evil wherever it is found. As a 
beacon of liberty for the entire world, I am inspired by the words 
spoken by President Bush in his Inaugural address last week, ``we 
cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the 
same time.''
  So, as we mark 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, it is 
not enough to simply remember, we must be ever vigilant in our fight 
against bigotry and hatred both at home and abroad.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise today to reflect on an important and 
meaningful anniversary that is being commemorated worldwide this week. 
Two days from now, January 27, 2005, will mark 60 years since the 
liberation of Auschwitz, the concentration and death camp at which over 
1.1 million innocent men, women, and children were murdered at the 
hands of the Nazis.
  As many of my colleagues know, I have long felt a very deep and 
personal connection to the tragedy of the Holocaust. My father, who 
would later serve two terms in this body, was the Executive Trial 
Counsel at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.
  He left this country for Nuremberg when I was only 1\1/2\ years old, 
and he spent the next two years poring over documents and conducting 
interviews that revealed to him the shocking, staggering process by 
which over 6 million people were systematically killed. He found 
himself face to face with many of the men who had planned and carried 
out Hitler's ``Final Solution.'' He found himself asking, wondering how 
so many human beings many of whom had loving families of their own, had 
been educated in universities, had enjoyed the fine arts how could they 
possibly conceive and execute a mass murder on an unimaginable scale? 
How was it that only a tiny sliver of a minority in Europe stood up 
against a plan to wipe out that continent's entire Jewish population, 
as well as Gypsies, the disabled, and homosexuals? And how was it that 
the United States and its allies failed to act in time to save millions 
of innocent lives?
  When my father came home from Europe, he didn't have answers to those 
questions. Indeed, we have continued asking these questions for the 
past six decades. What my father did bring back from Nuremberg was an 
unyielding and firm conviction to teach what he learned to as many 
people as he could, beginning with the members of his own family. From 
an early age, I can remember learning from my father names of people 
like Goebbels, Mengele, and Eichmann, and places like Auschwitz, 
Majdanek, and Treblinka.
  As an Irish Catholic boy growing up in Connecticut, my early 
education in the history of the Holocaust was something of an anomaly. 
Fortunately, this is no longer the case today. Yet there are still 
communities, here in America, and even more so around the world, where 
far too little is known about the Holocaust. More shockingly still, 
there are those individuals and groups which question or deny the very 
existence of the Holocaust a charge that is often interwoven with the 
very same poisonous anti-Semitism that led to this human tragedy.
  On this anniversary, therefore, it is critical not only to remember 
those who perished, but to redouble our efforts to enhance and increase 
awareness of the Holocaust. This is particularly important today, as 
each day there remain fewer and fewer living witnesses to the Holocaust 
those who themselves wore the yellow star and still have prisoner 
numbers tattooed on their arms.
  In the effort to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive, we have an 
invaluable resource located just a few minutes from here, the United 
States Holocaust Memorial Museum. That museum represents a steadfast 
commitment by our Nation to ensure that the Holocaust will never, ever 
fade away into the mist of history. I imagine that most, if not all, of 
my colleagues have already visited the museum. I would certainly urge 
any of my colleagues who might not have done so to visit, and to 
encourage their staffs and their constituents who visit our Nation's 
Capital to do the same.
  Finally, it is crucial that on this anniversary, we take meaningful 
steps to address acts of genocide in our own time. Today, in the Darfur 
province of Sudan, tens of thousands have already died as a result of a 
murderous ethnic cleansing campaign by the government-supported 
Janjaweed militias. It is estimated that as many as 350,000 could die 
in the coming months if action is not taken. Certainly, the sheer 
magnitude of the events in Darfur does not approach that of the 
Holocaust. On a fundamental level, however, the world is facing the 
same choice we did over 60 years go: do we respond to heinous crimes 
against humanity, or do we ignore a growing tragedy until it is far, 
far too late? This is the challenge that confronts us today, as we 
commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz and the other Nazi death camps 
to ensure that the cry of ``never again'' does not ring tragically 
hollow.
  In closing, Mr. President, I would like to note that in addition to 
the anniversary that we are commemorating this week, today's date marks 
a special occasion in the Jewish calendar. Today is the holiday of Tu 
B'Shvat, the traditional New Year for trees. It heralds the coming of 
the spring, and is an occasion for celebrating renewal, transition, and 
hope. It is my hope that as Americans and people around the world 
reflect on the 60th anniversary of liberation, we can seize this solemn 
occasion to look towards the future, and to plant new seeds of hope, 
tolerance, and justice among all of humankind.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, the world pauses this week to observe the 
60th anniversary of an event that calls for the deepest solemnity and 
reflection. In early 1945, as American and British armies closed in on 
the Third Reich from the west, Soviet forces were on the march through 
Poland. On January 27, they came to a place called Auschwitz.
  In the Nazi death industry, Auschwitz was its most productive 
factory. It is estimated that some one and a half million were murdered 
there. The victims were Poles, Slavs, Russians, Gypsies, but the 
majority were Jews. They died from disease, starvation, exposure and 
exhaustion, on the gallows and in front of the firing squads, but 
mostly they were marched into the gas chambers. From the camp's 
establishment in 1940 until its liberation, the ovens of

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Auschwitz operated around the clock, their smokestacks spewing the 
stench of inhumanity across the countryside.
  The Holocaust is a story of incomprehensible inhumanity, of an act of 
enormity that passed all moral bounds and entered the realm of pure 
evil. It also, however, is a story of incredible heroism, of men and 
women who risked their lives, many who sacrificed their lives, for 
others--not just family and friends, but often total strangers.
  Some of these heroes are well known to us: Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar 
Schlindler, to name just two. Some are less known, but equally 
deserving of mankind's gratitude. The American journalist Varian Fry, 
the beneficiary of a privileged childhood and an Ivy League education, 
risked his life repeatedly spiriting 2,000 Jews out of occupied France 
through the network he created of black-market funds, forged documents 
and secret escape routes. In 1941, in retaliation for an escape by 
others, a group of Auschwitz prisoners was lined up before a firing 
squad. At the last moment, the Roman Catholic Priest Maximillian Kolbe 
voluntarily stepped forward to take a father's place.
  The names of some heroes will never be known to us. In the weeks 
before the liberation, the Nazis began dismantling the machinery of 
death at Auschwitz in order to hide their crimes. The gas chambers and 
crematoria were dynamited, the mass graves were disguised, and the 
infamous March of Death began. Nearly 60,000 prisoners, already 
weakened by hunger and illness, were driven on foot across the harsh 
winter countryside to camps within the Reich. The penalty for failure 
to keep up was summary execution.
  That also was the penalty for the people who offered food, water, 
and--whenever the opportunity arose--escape when this sorrowful parade 
passed through their villages. One survivor of the March of Death, Jan 
Wygas, tells of a villager who approached his column of prisoners with 
a bottle of water:

       ``Let them drink,'' she said in German to the SS guards. 
     ``They are people, too.'' She gave the water to one of the 
     prisoners. The SS man yelled at her to move back. As she 
     turned to walk away, he shot her in the back of the head. I 
     saw this with my own eyes.

  And yet, despite this brutality heaped on top of brutality, the 
people of the villages continued to offer aid, in Poland, in Silesia, 
even in Germany itself.
  Indeed, there are stories of those within the regime who resisted in 
whatever way they could. In his inspiring Holocaust memoir, ``Anton the 
Dove Fancier,'' Bernard Gotfryd tells of the time in 1944 when he was 
sent as a slave laborer to a German aircraft plant. Like his co-
workers, Gotfryd did his best to be the worst worker possible, turning 
out defective parts and causing his machine to break down constantly. 
His stern German supervisor, known only as Herr Gruber, seemed not to 
notice this widespread incompetence, despite being under constant 
pressure to increase production.
  Once, Gotfryd sprained his ankle so severely he could not walk and 
could barely stand. In most cases, this disability would have earned a 
prisoner a spot on a train to a death camp. Again, Herr Gruber seemed 
not to notice.
  In the summer of 1944, Gotfryd discovered a treasure in the pocket of 
his work overalls: a sausage and a slab of real bread wrapped in 
newspaper. The rare and delicious food nourished his body. The 
newspaper nourished his soul, for it told of the Allied invasion of 
Normandy. The meaning of this message was to hold on, salvation was on 
the way. Gotfryd knew the messenger could only have been Herr Gruber.
  From where does this courage, this compassion, this self-sacrifice 
for total strangers come? None of us can say with certainty, but we all 
are blessed by its presence.
  On the other hand, the source of the hatred that led one of Europe's 
greatest powers to enact blatantly discriminatory laws, then to revel 
in a night of shattered windows, and finally to commit mass murder is 
known to us all too well. It is that particularly virulent and 
persistent form of mindless bigotry called anti-Semitism.
  One would think that the stories of Holocaust survivors, the 
irrefutable evidence before our eyes for the last 60 years, the 
memorials at such places as Auschwitz, and the debt we owe 6 million 
victims would be more than enough to eradicate this scourge. 
Tragically, Mr. President, that is not the case.
  Earlier this month, our State Department released a Report on Global 
Anti-Semitism. This report is the result of the Global Anti-Semitism 
Review Act of 2004, introduced by my distinguished colleague from Ohio, 
Senator Voinovich. I am proud to have been a co-sponsor.
  To say that the findings of this report are discouraging is a gross 
understatement. In country after country around the world, there has 
been a sharp increase in both the frequency and severity of anti-
Semitic incidents in the first years of the 21st Century. Clearly, the 
lessons of the first half of the 20th are in danger of being forgotten.
  These incidents are not just the random vandalism of Jewish 
cemeteries or synagogues, or the occasional incident of harassment or 
assault, and the perpetrators are not just neo-Nazis or skinheads on 
the fringe of society. The new strain of this disease combines ancient 
anti-Jewish prejudice with a new demonization of the State of Israel 
and unbridled anti-Americanism, replete with Nazi comparisons and 
symbolism. In this new anti-Semitism, the extreme right and the extreme 
left have gone around the bend so far that they now have joined forces.
  We see evidence of this new anti-Semitism all around us. The 
Protocols of the Elders of Zion is cited with increasing frequency in 
the Middle East press, instead of being consigned, along with its 
ideological sequel, Mein Kampf, to the ash heap of literary history. In 
some areas of Europe, the swastika replaces the letter ``s'' in anti-
Israel and anti-American posters, bumper stickers and buttons. There is 
the absurd rumor that Jews in New York City had advance warning of the 
September 11 attacks. The Holocaust itself, when not being denied, is 
at least being diminished.
  The answer is not to silence these despicable ideas but to respond to 
them. We all have an obligation to history and to humanity to speak 
out, loudly and without exception, to this perversion of the truth and 
this degradation of civilization.
  Julia Skalina is an Auschwitz survivor, a native of Czechoslovakia 
who now lives in my home State, in the city of Portland. She is a 
frequent speaker at schools in Maine. These are her words: ``I learned 
what hatred can do, what people driven by hatred can do. I wish any 
future generation should never have to live through what we lived 
through.''
  That wish will come true only if we--all of us--make it so. The 
horror of the Holocaust and the magnificence of the human spirit that 
it revealed demand this of us.

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