[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 106 (Friday, July 29, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1701-E1702]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   REMARKS OF THE FIRST LADY, LAURA BUSH, AT THE DAY OF REMEMBRANCE 
                             COMMEMORATION

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 28, 2005

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, May 5, 2005, the annual 
ceremony to observe Yom Hashoah, the Day of Remembrance for victims of 
the Holocaust, was held in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol. 
This year's theme, ``From Liberation to the Pursuit of Justice,'' 
commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Allied liberation of the Nazi 
concentration camps as well as the beginning of the prosecution of war 
criminals at Nuremberg, Germany. Members of Congress joined with 
representatives of the diplomatic corps, executive and judicial branch 
officials, and hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their families to 
commemorate the anniversary of this historical triumph.
  This moving ceremony featured a stirring address by distinguished 
First Lady Laura Bush. As a proponent of tolerance and freedom, and the 
daughter of a liberator of the Nazi concentration camp at Nordhausen, 
Laura Bush champions the call to teach America's youth about the 
horrors of the Holocaust. She reminds us that we must honor the memory 
of the victims of Hitler's twisted tyranny so that current and future 
generations will always remember the dark atrocities of the Holocaust 
and never repeat them.
  I ask, Mr. Speaker, that the outstanding address of First Lady Laura 
Bush be placed in the Congressional Record, and I urge my colleagues to 
study and ponder her thoughtful remarks.

  Remarks at the Day of Remembrance Commemoration by First Lady Laura 
                                  Bush

       Thank you, Fred Zeidman and Ruth Mandel, for your 
     leadership of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Thanks to 
     the Members of Congress who are here with us, as well as the 
     members of the diplomatic corps. Thank you, Susan Eisenhower, 
     for representing your grandfather, who was a hero of freedom. 
     I particularly want to express my gratitude to the survivors 
     and the liberators who bear living witness to the Holocaust. 
     Your presence is evidence that good will always triumph over 
     evil.
       Four years ago, I accompanied my husband here when he 
     delivered remarks to observe the Day of Remembrance. My 
     mother was with us that day, and neither of us knew when we 
     came to this ceremony that the flags of the liberating units 
     would be brought into the Rotunda. When we saw the Timberwolf 
     on the 104th Infantry Division, we immediately recognized it 
     as the symbol of my father's World War II unit. It was moving 
     and it brought back a flood of memories. I'm honored to be 
     here again today this year to see these proud flags of 
     liberation.
       The men and women of the Allied forces were fighting evil 
     and cruelty. Six million Jews perished in the Holocaust. They 
     were stripped of their dignity and robbed of their lives 
     solely because of who they were and the faith they practiced. 
     It was not the first time evil men had sought the destruction 
     of the Jewish people. Even today, we see incidences of anti-
     Semitism around the world. The survivors of the Holocaust 
     bear witness to the danger of what anti-Semitism can become, 
     and their stories of survival remind us that when we are 
     confronted by anti-Semitism, we must fight it.
       The scope of the horror of the death camps emerged 60 years 
     ago as Allied troops liberated the survivors. First Majdanek. 
     Later Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buchenwald. One by one, the gates 
     opened to reveal the horrors inside, and then to let in the 
     light.
       Survivors stepped forward to describe what had occurred, 
     and then to carry forward the memory of mothers, fathers, 
     children, and friends who were the victims. The liberated saw 
     troops wearing the uniforms of many nations, and viewed them 
     as ``angels from heaven.''

[[Page E1702]]

       The liberators brought freedom. They also brought dignity. 
     Men and women in the camps had been treated as less than 
     human. They were given numbers for identification. They were 
     deployed for slave labor and tossed aside when they could no 
     longer work.
       When the liberators came, simple acts gave rise to profound 
     joy. A survivor named Gerda Weissman Klein recalled her 
     liberation in an interview recorded in this Museum. An 
     American soldier greeted Gerda and asked, ``May I see the 
     other ladies?'' After six years of being addressed with 
     insults and slurs, to be called a lady was an overwhelming 
     courtesy. The soldier asked her to come with him, and Gerda 
     said, ``He held the door open for me and let me precede him, 
     and in that gesture restored my humanity.''
       A survivor named Alan Zimm remembers the Allied soldiers 
     who liberated him from Bergen-Belsen. They called to the 
     people inside the camp in many different languages, each time 
     with the same simple message: My dear friends, from now on, 
     you are free.
       The liberators themselves remember the scenes. They also 
     became keepers of memories, witnesses to the evil. Few could 
     comprehend what they saw. Young men, many in their teens, 
     hardened by years of fighting their way across Europe, at the 
     camps they wept for the people they met. One American who 
     participated in the liberation of Dachau recalled that with 
     just one look at the survivors, he quotes, ``We realized what 
     this war was all about.''
       Many of the soldiers returned home, unable to talk about 
     their experiences at the camps. The emotions were too raw, 
     the images too painful. Words could not fully convey what 
     happened.
       My father's unit, the 104th Infantry, helped to liberate 
     the camp at Nordhausen. My father is no longer living, but 
     when I used to ask him about that time, he couldn't bear to 
     talk about it. I think in retrospect, he couldn't bear to 
     tell his child that there could be such evil in the world.
       As survivors and liberators leave us, the work of 
     preserving their memories is all the more urgent. Staff and 
     volunteers from the United States Holocaust Museum have 
     conducted thousands of interviews to gather information from 
     eyewitnesses. The information is available to all who seek 
     it. Over the last 12 years, 22 million visitors have walked 
     through the museum. Each year, 150,000 teachers receive 
     training on how to educate children about the Holocaust. The 
     museum has sent survivors to speak to more than 15,000 
     members of the armed forces at more than 40 military 
     installations.
       The museum is our national effort to honor the survivors, 
     the liberators, the victims and the families affected by the 
     Holocaust. It's fitting that it sits on the National Mall, 
     near great monuments to democracy. The lessons of tyranny and 
     liberty that lie at the heart of the Holocaust remind us that 
     preserving freedom requires constant vigilance.
       Other museums and memorials exist throughout America and 
     around the world. Some are small and private, located in the 
     hearts and homes of families who cherish their heritage. 
     Others bring communities together to explore the impact of 
     the Holocaust.
       I learned of the efforts of a group of teachers and 
     students in Whitwell, Tennessee. Whitwell is a rural town of 
     about 1,600 people, most of them Christian. Students and 
     staff at Whitwell Middle School began studying the Holocaust 
     to explore, as one teacher described it, ``what happens when 
     intolerance reigns and when prejudice goes unchecked.''
       The students at Whitwell had trouble grasping the magnitude 
     of the Holocaust. When thinking about the Jews who lost their 
     lives in the concentration camp, one student asked, ``What is 
     six million?''
       In the course of their research, the students discovered 
     that during World War II, the people of Norway wore paper 
     clips on their clothing in silent resistance to the Nazi 
     aggression. Whitwell's students decided to collect six 
     million paper clips so that they could visualize what a 
     staggering number six million really is.
       They ultimately collected 30 million paper clips. The 
     school acquired a World War II-era German railcar, one used 
     to carry people to the camps. Today, the railcar sits on the 
     grounds of Whitwell Middle School, holding 11 million paper 
     clips, to represent the victims of Nazi persecution.
       But of course, what's important about the paper clips are 
     the stories that accompanied them. Eyewitness accounts poured 
     in from survivors and liberators, from men and women who had 
     never known their grandparents, or who had lost their 
     siblings. Survivors visited Whitwell to relate their 
     experiences, and to help ensure that the lessons of the 
     Holocaust reached even a small Appalachian town.
       A center of Holocaust awareness and memory now sits in one 
     of the least likely places. A movie called ``Paper Clips'' 
     was produced to document the Whitwell project. Students give 
     tours of their railcar memorial and pass along the knowledge 
     they've gained. Teachers from the Whitwell have spoken to 
     students in German schools, and they visited concentration 
     camps.
       When President Bush and I visited Auschwitz, I realized 
     that there are things textbooks can't teach. They can't teach 
     you how to feel when you see prayer shawls or baby shoes left 
     by children being torn from their mothers, or prison cells 
     with the scratch marks of attempted escape. But what moved me 
     the most were the thousands of eyeglasses, their lenses still 
     smudged with tears and dirt. It struck me how vulnerable we 
     are as humans, how many needed those glasses to see, and how 
     many people living around the camps and around the world 
     refused to see. We see today and we know what happened and 
     we'll never forget.
       Later this week, President Bush and I will visit the 
     Rumbula Holocaust Memorial in Latvia--the site of the second-
     largest massacre of Jews perpetrated by the Nazis during 
     World War II. Whenever and wherever we remember the victims 
     of the Holocaust, we deepen our commitment to tolerance and 
     freedom. In Whitwell, Tennessee, in Washington, DC, at Yad 
     Vashem, at Auschwitz--new generations are honoring those 
     ideals simply by looking and learning and listening. The 
     voices of the survivors and liberators will one day be 
     silent, but their testimony will be heard forever. Thank you, 
     and may God bless you all.

                          ____________________