[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 16 (Monday, April 26, 1993)]
[Pages 644-646]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the Dedication of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

 April 22, 1993

    Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President, Mrs. Gore, President and 
Mrs. Herzog, distinguished leaders of nations from around the world who 
have come here to be with us today, the leaders of our Congress, and the 
citizens of America, and especially to Mr. Meyerhoff and all of those 
who worked so hard to make this day possible, and even more to those who 
have spoken already on this program, whose lives and words bear eloquent 
witness to why we have come here today.
    It is my purpose on behalf of the United States to commemorate this 
magnificent museum, meeting as we do among memorials, within the sight 
of the memorial to Thomas Jefferson, the author of our freedom, near 
where Abraham Lincoln is seated, who gave his life so that our Nation 
might extend its mandate of freedom to all who live within our borders. 
We gather near the place where the legendary and recently departed 
Marian Anderson sang songs of freedom and where Martin Luther King 
summoned us all to dream and work together. Here on the town square of 
our national life, on this 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, at 
Eisenhower Plaza on Raoul Wallenberg Place, we dedicate the United 
States Holocaust Museum and so bind one of the darkest lessons in 
history to the hopeful soul of America.
    As we have seen already today, this museum is not for the dead alone 
nor even for the survivors who have been so beautifully represented; it 
is perhaps most of all for those of us who were not there at all, to 
learn the lessons, to deepen our memories and our humanity, and to 
transmit these lessons from generation to generation.
    The Holocaust, to be sure, transformed the entire 20th century, 
sweeping aside the Enlightenment hope that evil somehow could be 
permanently vanished from the face of the Earth, demonstrating there is 
no war to end all war, that the struggle against the basest tendencies 
of our nature must continue forever and ever.
    The Holocaust began when the most civilized country of its day 
unleashed unprecedented acts of cruelty and hatred, abetted by 
perversions of science, philosophy, and law. A culture, which produced 
Goethe, Schiller, and Beethoven, then brought forth Hitler and Himmler, 
the merciless hordes, who themselves were educated, as others who were 
educated stood by and did nothing. Millions died for who they were, how 
they worshiped, what they believed, and who they loved. But one people, 
the Jews, were immutably marked for total destruction. They who were 
among their nation's most patriotic citizens, whose extinction served no 
military purpose nor offered any political gain, they who threatened no 
one were slaughtered by an efficient, unrelenting bureaucracy, dedicated 
solely to a radical evil with a curiously antiseptic title: The Final 
Solution.

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    The Holocaust reminds us forever that knowledge divorced from values 
can only serve to deepen the human nightmare, that a head without a 
heart is not humanity. For those of us here today representing the 
nations of the West, we must live forever with this knowledge. Even as 
our fragmentary awareness of crimes grew into indisputable facts, far 
too little was done. Before the war even started, doors to liberty were 
shut. And even after the United States and the Allies attacked Germany, 
rail lines to the camps within miles of military-significant targets 
were left undisturbed.
    Still there were, as has been noted, many deeds of singular courage 
and resistance: the Danes and the Bulgarians, men like Emmanuel 
Ringelbaum, who died after preserving in metal milk cans the history of 
the Warsaw ghetto; Janusz Korczak, who stayed with children until their 
last breaths at Treblinka; and Raoul Wallenberg, who perhaps rescued as 
many as 100,000 Hungarian Jews; and those known and those never to be 
known, who manned the thin line of righteousness, who risked and lost 
their lives to save others, accruing no advantage to themselves but 
nobly serving the larger cause of humanity.
    As the war ended, these rescuers were joined by our military forces 
who, alongside the allied armies, played the decisive role in bringing 
the Holocaust to an end. Overcoming the shock of discovery, they walked 
survivors from those dark, dark places into the sweet sunlight of 
redemption, soldiers and survivors being forever joined in history and 
humanity. This place is their place, too, for them as for us, to 
memorialize the past and steel ourselves for the challenges of tomorrow.
    We must all now frankly admit that there will come a time in the not 
too distant future when the Holocaust will pass from living reality and 
shared experience to memory and to history. To preserve this shared 
history of anguish, to keep it vivid and real so that evil can be 
combated and contained, we are here to consecrate this memorial and 
contemplate its meaning for us. For more than any other event, the 
Holocaust gave rise to the universal declaration of human rights, the 
charter of our common humanity. And it contributed, indeed made certain, 
the long overdue creation of the nation of Israel.
    Now, with the demise of communism and the rise of democracy out of 
the ashes of former Communist states, with the end of the cold war, we 
must not only rejoice in so much that is good in the world but recognize 
that not all in this new world is good. We learn again and again that 
the world has yet to run its course of animosity and violence.
    Ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia is but the most brutal and 
blatant and ever-present manifestation of what we see also with the 
oppression of the Kurds in Iraq, the abusive treatment of the Baha'i in 
Iran, the endless race-based violence in South Africa. And in many other 
places we are reminded again and again how fragile are the safeguards of 
civilization. So do the depraved and insensate bands now loose in the 
modern world. Look at the liars and the propagandists among us, the 
skinheads and the Liberty Lobby here at home, the Afrikaaners resistance 
movement in South Africa, the Radical Party of Serbia, the Russian 
blackshirts. With them we must all compete for the interpretation and 
the preservation of history, of what we know and how we should behave.
    The evil represented in this museum is incontestable. But as we are 
its witness, so must we remain its adversary in the world in which we 
live; so we must stop the fabricators of history and the bullies as 
well. Left unchallenged, they would still prey upon the powerless, and 
we must not permit that to happen again.
    To build bulwarks against this kind of evil, we know there is but 
one path to take. It is the direction opposite that which produced the 
Holocaust; it is that which recognizes that among all our differences, 
we still cannot ever separate ourselves one from another. We must find 
in our diversity our common humanity. We must reaffirm that common 
humanity, even in the darkest and deepest of our own disagreements.
    Sure, there is new hope in this world. The emergence of new, vibrant 
democratic states, many of whose leaders are here today, offers a shield 
against the inhumanity we remember. And it is particularly appropriate 
that

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this museum is here in this magnificent city, an enduring tribute to 
democracy. It is a constant reminder of our duty to build and nurture 
the institutions of public tranquility and humanity.
    It occurs to me that some may be reluctant to come inside these 
doors because the photographs and remembrance of the past impart more 
pain than they can bear. I understand that. I walked through the museum 
on Monday night and spent more than 2 hours. But I think that our 
obligations to history and posterity alike should beckon us all inside 
these doors. It is a journey that I hope every American who comes to 
Washington will take, a journey I hope all the visitors to this city 
from abroad will make.
    I believe that this museum will touch the life of everyone who 
enters and leave everyone forever changed; a place of deep sadness and a 
sanctuary of bright hope; an ally of education against ignorance, of 
humility, against arrogance, an investment in a secure future against 
whatever insanity lurks ahead. If this museum can mobilize morality, 
then those who have perished will thereby gain a measure of immortality.
    I know this is a difficult day for those we call survivors. Those of 
us born after the war cannot yet fully comprehend their sorrow or pain. 
But if our expressions are inadequate to this moment, at least may I 
share these words inscribed in the Book of Wisdom, ``The souls of the 
righteous are in the hands of God, and no torment shall touch them. In 
the eyes of fools they seem to die. Their passing away was thought to be 
an affliction, and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But 
they are in peace.''
    On this day of triumphant reunion and celebration, I hope those who 
have survived have found their peace. Our task, with God's blessing upon 
our souls and the memories of the fallen in our hearts and minds, is to 
the ceaseless struggle to preserve human rights and dignity. We are now 
strengthened and will be forever strengthened by remembrance. I pray 
that we shall prevail.

Note: The President spoke at 12:43 p.m. at the Memorial. In his remarks, 
he referred to Chaim Herzog, President of Israel, and Harvey M. 
Meyerhoff, Chairman, United States Holocaust Memorial Council.