[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 16 (Wednesday, February 3, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E147-E148]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     COMMEMORATING 65TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                         HON. ANTHONY D. WEINER

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 2, 2010

  Mr. WEINER. Mr. Speaker, I commend to my colleagues the remarks 
recently made by Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the Federal 
Communications Commission and head of the Presidential delegation that 
visited Auschwitz on the 65th anniversary of its liberation.
  Drawing upon his strong personal connection to the atrocities that 
occurred there, Chairman Genachowski's remarks captured the spirit of 
the anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation, and highlighted our 
obligation to fight hatred and intolerance by never forgetting the 
stories of the prisoners of Auschwitz and the forces who freed them.
  I would like to ask unanimous consent to insert Chairman 
Genachowski's remarks into the Record.

               Auschwitz: Remembrance and Responsibility

                   (Oswiecim, Poland, Jan. 27, 2010)

       Thank you to the government and people of Poland for 
     hosting this important event, and to the International 
     Auschwitz Council and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
       I'm grateful to President Obama for asking me to lead the 
     delegation representing the United States on the occasion of 
     the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I'm 
     privileged to be part of such a distinguished delegation, 
     along with Assistant to the President Susan Sher, Ambassador 
     Lee Feinstein, Special Envoy Hanna Rosenthal, and three 
     extraordinary survivors of the Holocaust, each with powerful 
     experiences and deeply noble lives: Mr. Roman Kent, Ms. 
     Charlene Schiff, and Ms. Eda Sternberg-Powidzki.
       I also welcome colleagues from the United States Department 
     of Education, here to participate in the Education Ministers' 
     Conference on ``Auschwitz: Memory, Responsibility, 
     Education''--Matthew Yale, who is the department's Deputy 
     Chief of Staff, and Phil Rosenfelt, who is Deputy General 
     Counsel and the Secretary of Education's designated 
     representative to the council for the Holocaust Museum.
       As head of this delegation to Auschwitz, I was sent to 
     mourn, to remember, to testify--for I have a connection with 
     this part of Europe, and with the solemn grounds on which we 
     stand today. Genachowski is a name pronounced easily in this 
     part of the world. My family has roots in Poland, Ukraine, 
     Hungary, Romania, and other nearby countries.
       Roots like Bella Rabinovitch and her family, a Jewish 
     family.
       Bella was a mother of four--three grown girls and a boy--
     living in Belgium in the first half of the last century. Her 
     husband, Chaim Ben Zion, was the Cantor in Antwerp's main 
     synagogue. His gift was his voice, which he used to lead the 
     congregation in prayer and to sing his beloved operas. 
     Bella's children were married; young grandchildren were part 
     of the family mix. A nice life for a girl originally from a 
     poor rural village in the Ukraine.
       But as the German invasion of Europe spread into Belgium, 
     Bella's world began to crumble. One daughter and son-in-law 
     fled the country, fearing the worst. Then Bella's husband and 
     son were arrested and sent to a slave labor camp. Another 
     son-in-law, Shimon, was picked up by the SS on a streetcar 
     (his identity card checked; it was marked ``J''). He brazenly 
     escaped, and that night left the country with his wife, 
     Bella's daughter Dina, and their five-year-old son Azriel.
       Of course, the worst was yet to come.
       Bella went into hiding with her remaining daughter, son-in-
     law, and grandson. Like so many others, they were eventually 
     discovered. The Nazis gave Bella the choice to stay in 
     Antwerp. She chose the gruesome transport with her family.
       On April 19, 1942, Bella and what was left of her family in 
     Belgium were packed onto a train along with 1,396 others. 
     After three days in the cattle car, they arrived at 
     Auschwitz-Birkenau.
       The meticulous Nazi records are clear on the dates. But 
     there is much we can only wonder about.
       Did they see the sign ``Arbeit Macht Frei'' (so callously 
     stolen recently, and fortunately recovered)? Did they know 
     what was next? Did they recognize that smell in the air? When 
     the train stopped they were unloaded into a line where fates 
     were decided.
       The records state that Bella Rabinovitch, along with Sara, 
     Isaac and four-year-old Jacob were ``Gazes a L'Arivee''--
     gassed on arrival. Over 1,000 of the 1,400 passengers on that 
     train were gassed on arrival.
       Bella is not famous, but you knew her story already, a 
     story with millions of different beginnings but one tragic 
     ending.
       Bella Rabinovitch was my great-grandmother. I am the 
     descendant of a victim whose ashes reside on these grounds.
       My father, Azriel Genachowski, was the five-year-old boy I 
     told you about. His path to freedom with his parents was 
     harrowing, and at several key moments over many months non-
     Jews risked their lives to save his.
       Azriel Genachowski and my mother Adele are here today, with 
     the American delegation. They survived the Nazi onslaught of 
     Europe. They taught me what I have told you. They taught me 
     what Simon Weisenthal once said, ``Survival is a privilege 
     which entails obligations.''
       Out of the ashes of the Nazi terror come many obligations.
       As President Obama said last year upon visiting Buchenwald, 
     a death camp his great uncle helped liberate as an army 
     infantryman, ``It is up to us to bear witness; to ensure that 
     the world continues to note what happened here; to remember 
     all those who survived and all those who perished, and to 
     remember them not just as victims, but also as individuals 
     who hoped and loved and dreamed just like us.''
       We must remember them not only with our words and prayers, 
     but with our deeds--working to ensure that the sacred phrase 
     ``Never Again,'' never becomes mechanical language, never 
     drains of meaning.
       Elie Weisel teaches, ``If we forget, we are guilty, we are 
     accomplices.''
       We must remember the courageous prisoners, soldiers, 
     resistance fighters, and ordinary civilians--Soviets, Poles, 
     Germans, Danes, Americans, and so many others--who risked 
     their lives and sacrificed so much to save others, reminding 
     us of the boundless human capacity for good.
       Our burden is even greater as those who liberated the camps 
     are now in their eighties, and only a handful of 
     concentration camp survivors remain.
       As death is taking those whom genocide spared, we must 
     respond to what Czeslaw Milosz called ``the command to 
     participate actively in history.'' We must renew our 
     commitment to fight for freedom and against intolerance.
       Anti-semitism, hatred, and racism remain deep and troubling 
     facts of modern life, the

[[Page E148]]

     world over. The memory of the atrocities committed at 
     Auschwitz and throughout Europe must steel our resolve to 
     fight every form of intolerance and inhumanity.
       The Holocaust proves many sad truths. One is that modernity 
     is not an inoculation against genocide.
       The pillars of modernity--science and technology--are 
     powerful forces. Perverted for evil by the Nazis, but also 
     sources of unlimited hope, opportunity and transformative 
     change.
       My father, who eventually came to the United States to 
     study engineering, taught me about the power of technology to 
     transform lives for the better.
       Let us fight so that technology is deployed to spread 
     knowledge, to educate, to ensure that people in all corners 
     of the world know of death-camp victims, survivors, and 
     liberators.
       Let us fight so that technology is used to shine a light on 
     oppression and intolerance, to illuminate persecution and 
     dehumanization, to take oppression and mass murder out of the 
     shadows.
       We know that the Nazis sought to shut off from the rest of 
     the world the unspeakable killing that went on here. We know 
     that for the Nazis control of the flow of information was an 
     imperative, an SS boot on the free flow of news.
       Let us fight for freedom. For fundamental freedoms 
     disregarded too often and tragically in the 20th century, 
     fundamental freedoms that, as Secretary of State Hillary 
     Clinton has urged, we must enshrine as core principles in the 
     2lst century--freedom of expression, freedom of worship, 
     freedom from want, freedom from fear, and freedom to connect.
       The freedom of information is essential, while also no 
     substitute for the power of actual places to teach and 
     instruct. It is a moral imperative to preserve Auschwitz and 
     other physical sites of remembrance, because they shock us 
     into an understanding that ideas alone cannot.
       As the survivors continue to leave us, places like this 
     take on an even greater importance. Because places like 
     Auschwitz aren't really mute. In their unspeaking way, they 
     tell us of the unspeakable.
       The former prisoners who first proposed a memorial and 
     museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau knew this. This place, and 
     others like it, stands as a refutation of those who insist 
     the Holocaust never happened--a denial of the truth that is 
     baseless, ignorant, and driven by hatred.
       The great American writer Mark Twain said: ``A lie travels 
     halfway around the world before the truth puts its shoes 
     on.'' Today's haters are using old and new tools to foster 
     Holocaust denial and mass murder. Let us come together to 
     counter those efforts. Let us work together to make sure the 
     facts of the Holocaust and its lessons remain fresh for each 
     new generation.
       My daughter, Lilah, is five years old--the same age as my 
     father when he and his parents made their escape from Nazi-
     occupied Belgium.
       My son, Aaron, is three years old--the same age as his 
     mom's father in Nazi-occupied Holland when his parents handed 
     him over to be hidden by righteous non-Jewish heroes who 
     risked their lives to save people they didn't know.
       We preserve Auschwitz-Birkenau so that children all over 
     the world like Lilah, Aaron, and their older brother Jake can 
     visit and absorb the full dimensions of the unthinkable 
     tragedy that occurred here.
       Bella Rabinovitch is gone, but her spirit lives on in eight 
     grandchildren, 21 great-grandchildren, and 45 great-great-
     grandchildren, each a living legacy to the victory over Nazi 
     oppression. In Israel and throughout the world, Jews and 
     other groups singled out by the Nazis for extermination 
     survive and thrive.
       Bella's spirit also lives on in those who liberated 
     Auschwitz-Birkenau three years after her death; and in those 
     here participating 65 years later in this multi-national, 
     multi-generational recognition that the horrors she and so 
     many others witnessed and suffered must never be permitted to 
     recur.
       We are humbled by the survivors. We honor the liberators. 
     We mourn the victims.
       In their name, we say: Yitgadal Vyitkadash Shme Raba.
       In their name, we pledge to remember.
       In their name, we pledge: Never Again.

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