[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 12 (Tuesday, February 8, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E167-E168]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 ADDRESS OF SECRETARY GENERAL KOFI ANNAN AT THE SPECIAL SESSION OF THE 
 UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY COMMEMORATING THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF 
                   THE LIBERATION OF NAZI DEATH CAMPS

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 8, 2005

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on January 24 of this year, the United 
Nations General Assembly commemorated the 60th anniversary of the 
liberation of Nazi death camps. January 27, 1945, was the date on which 
Russian troops liberated Auschwitz, the most notorious of the death 
camps, and the symbol of the Holocaust, in which over 6 million Jews 
and hundreds of thousands of other nationalities were brutally murdered 
during World War II.
  The United Nations commemoration, which was held three days before 
the anniversary, began with a moment of silence for the victims. Those 
speaking included a number of foreign ministers and other distinguished 
statesmen from many of the member states of the United Nations, as well 
as survivors of the Holocaust and liberators of the camps from the 
Allied military forces who defeated the Nazi regime.
  Mr. Speaker, I welcome the General Assembly's most appropriate 
commemoration, and I want to acknowledge and commend Secretary General 
Kofi Annan for the key role that he played in the convening of this 
meeting, He personally fought to hold this meeting, and I am certain 
that without his leadership it would not have taken place.
  The Secretary General has a special family link to the Holocaust that 
my wife Annette and I share. Kofi Annan's wife Nan is the niece of 
Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish diplomat and humanitarian who came to 
Budapest, Hungary, in the summer of 1944 at the request of the United 
States to save the lives of Jews who were being sent to Auschwitz to be 
sent to the gas chambers. Wallenberg saved the lives of tens of 
thousands of Hungarian Jews, and among those are my wife Annette and 
me.
  One comment by the Secretary General is particularly significant and 
meaningful for all of us, Mr. Speaker. Kofi Annan told the General 
Assembly, ``The United Nations must never forget that it was created as 
a response to the evil of Nazism, or that the horror of the Holocaust 
helped to shape its mission.''
  Mr. Speaker, I ask that the outstanding address of the Secretary 
General be placed in the Congressional Record. As the Secretary General 
said so well, we must keep in mind that the United Nations was founded 
to fight the atrocities and evils that were brought about by the Nazi 
German regime. It is incumbent upon us to continue the fight against 
brutality, abuse of human rights and the violations of dignity and 
humanity that marked the Holocaust, but that tragically continue to be 
with us.
  I urge my colleagues to read and ponder Secretary General Annan's 
serious and thoughtful remarks.

         Address of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan

       The date for this session was chosen to mark the sixtieth 
     anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. But, as you know, 
     there were many other camps, which fell one by one to the 
     allied forces in the winter and spring of 1945.
       Only gradually did the world come to know the full 
     dimensions of the evil that those camps contained. The 
     discovery was fresh in the minds of the delegates at San 
     Francisco, when this Organization was founded. The United 
     Nations must never forget that it was created as a response 
     to the evil of Nazism, or that the horror of the Holocaust 
     helped to shape its mission. That response is enshrined in 
     our Charter, and in the Universal Declaration of Human 
     Rights.
       The camps, Mr. President, were not mere ``concentration 
     camps''. Let us not use the euphemism of those who built 
     them. Their purpose was not to ``concentrate'' a group in one 
     place, so as to keep an eye on them. It was to exterminate an 
     entire people.
       There were other victims, too. The Roma, or Gypsies, were 
     treated with the same utter

[[Page E168]]

     disregard for their humanity as the Jews. Nearly a quarter of 
     the one million Roma living in Europe were killed.
       Poles and other Slavs, Soviet prisoners of war, and 
     mentally or physically handicapped people were likewise 
     massacred in cold blood. Groups as disparate as Jehovah's 
     Witnesses and homosexuals, as well as political opponents and 
     many writers and artists, were treated with appalling 
     brutality.
       To all these we owe respect, which we can show by making 
     special efforts to protect all communities that are similarly 
     threatened and vulnerable, now and in the future.
       But the tragedy of the Jewish people was unique. Two thirds 
     of all Europe's Jews, including one and a half million 
     children, were murdered. An entire civilization, which had 
     contributed far beyond its numbers to the cultural and 
     intellectual riches of Europe and the world, was uprooted; 
     destroyed; laid waste.
       In a moment, you will have the honour of hearing from one 
     of the survivors, my dear friend Elie Wiesel. As Elie has 
     written, ``not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were 
     victims''. It is fitting, therefore, that the first State to 
     speak today will be the State of Israel--which rose, like the 
     United Nations itself, from the ashes of the Holocaust.
       The Holocaust came as the climax of a long, disgraceful 
     history of anti-Semitic persecution, pogroms, 
     institutionalized discrimination and other degradation. The 
     purveyors of hatred were not always, and may not be in the 
     future, only marginalized extremists.
       How could such evil happen in a cultured and highly 
     sophisticated nation-State, in the heart of a Europe whose 
     artists and thinkers had given the world so much? Truly it 
     has been said: ``all that is needed for evil to triumph is 
     that good men do nothing''.
       There were good men--and women--who did do something: 
     Germans like Gertrude Luckner and Oskar Schindler; foreigners 
     like Meip Geis, Chiune Sugihara, Selahattin Ulkumen, and 
     Raoul Wallenberg. But not enough. Not nearly enough.
       Such an evil must never be allowed to happen again. We must 
     be on the watch out for any revival of anti-Semitism, and 
     ready to act against the new forms of it that are happening 
     today.
       That obligation binds us not only to the Jewish people, but 
     to all others that have been, or may be, threatened with a 
     similar fate. We must be vigilant against all ideologies 
     based on hatred and exclusion, whenever and wherever they may 
     appear.
       On occasions such as this, rhetoric comes easily. We 
     rightly say, ``never again''. But action is much harder. 
     Since the Holocaust, the world has, to its shame, failed more 
     than once to prevent or halt genocide--for instance in 
     Cambodia, in Rwanda, and in the former Yugoslavia.
       Even today we see many horrific examples of inhumanity 
     around the world. To decide which deserves priority, or 
     precisely what action will be effective in protecting victims 
     and giving them a secure future, is not simple. It is easy to 
     say that ``something must be done''. To say exactly what, and 
     when, and how, and to do it, is much more difficult.
       But what we must not do is deny what is happening, or 
     remain indifferent, as so many did when the Nazi factories of 
     death were doing their ghastly work.
       Terrible things are happening today in Darfur, Sudan. 
     Tomorrow I expect to receive the report of the international 
     commission of inquiry, which I established at the request of 
     the Security Council.
       That report will determine whether or not acts of genocide 
     have occurred in Darfur. But also, and no less important, it 
     will identify the gross violations of international 
     humanitarian law and human rights which undoubtedly have 
     occurred.
       The Security Council, once it has that report in its hands, 
     will have to decide what action to take, with a view to 
     ensuring that the perpetrators are held accountable. It is a 
     very solemn responsibility.
       Today is a day to honour the victims of the Holocaust--to 
     whom, alas, no reparation can ever be made, at least in this 
     world.
       It is a day to honour our founders--the allied nations 
     whose troops fought and died to defeat Nazism. Those troops 
     are represented here today by veteran liberators of the 
     camps, including my dear friend and colleague, Sir Brian 
     Urquhart.
       It is a day to honour the brave people who risked, and 
     sometimes sacrificed, their own lives to save fellow human 
     beings. Their examples redeem our humanity, and must inspire 
     our conduct.
       It is a day to honour the survivors, who heroically 
     thwarted the designs of their oppressors, bringing to the 
     world and to the Jewish people a message of hope. As time 
     passes, their numbers dwindle. It falls to us, the successor 
     generations, to lift high the torch of remembrance, and to 
     live our own lives by its light.
       It is, above all, a day to remember not only the victims of 
     past horrors, whom the world abandoned, but also the 
     potential victims of present and future ones. A day to look 
     them in the eye, and say: ``you, at least, we must not 
     fail''.

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