Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony at Capitol

Good morning. Every year, we begin this ceremony with a tribute to the American soldiers who, along with our allies, courageously fought to defeat Nazi Germany and its collaborators. And every year, there are fewer veterans. Our veterans will eventually pass from the scene, but the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shall never forget them, never. We will continue to honor them throughout our museum, on our Eisenhower Plaza at our entrance wall, featuring the flags of the divisions that liberated the camps, and in our permanent exhibition. We do all this to honor the past and because, as World War II recedes in times its lessons may be forgotten. And as we look at the world around us, and especially on our campuses, clearly the war’s lessons are more timely than ever.

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Our nation, especially our youth, need to understand the dangers of unchecked anti-Semitism and all that was at stake in the war. The liberation of Europe, the freeing of victims of Nazism, and the preservation of our own democracy. This is why every year we hold this special commemoration in this special place. We would not be standing in this great temple of democracy, joined by Holocaust survivors and their descendants, if not for our brave soldiers fighting a brutal war across Europe. My own parents, who endured multiple Nazi camps and ghettos, owed their lives to our soldiers. America’s victory over Nazism was made possible by the success of the ambitious D-Day Invasion, whose 80th anniversary we will commemorate in just one month. Led by General Eisenhower, it remains the largest seaborne invasion in history.

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It enabled the defeat of Germany that took 11 months to achieve, and during those 11 months, hundreds of thousands would be killed. American soldiers and allies, Jewish men, women, and children, and other victims of Nazism. But remember this, by D-Day, the Nazis had already killed five million Jews because, as we know, the Nazis waged two wars, a military war to dominate Europe and a genocidal war against the Jews, as well as other racial and political enemies such as Roma, Slavs, people with disabilities, and gay men. Our brave soldiers, the first eyewitnesses to the Holocaust, not only defeated Nazism, they shared the truth about the unprecedented crimes. The crimes seemed unbelievable.

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These soldiers told our nation that we must believe that the unthinkable is possible. The World War II generation is often called the greatest generation. Our fellow Americans made numerous sacrifices as they came together from every political persuasion and every part of the country to support each other, to fight the war, and protect our democracy. We must never forget what they did and why. We must never forget how much we owe them. We must never forget the essential lesson they teach us that when democracy and freedom are at stake, when hatred is rampant, complacency is never an option. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, please stand for the presentation of the flags of the United States Army Liberating Divisions. First Infantry Division, Falkenau an der Eger. 101st Airborne Division, Landsberg. Second Infantry Division, Leipzig-Schönefeld, and Spergau. 82nd Airborne Division, Wöbbelin. Fourth Infantry Division, Dachau subcamp. 20th Armored Division, Dachau. Eighth Infantry Division, Wöbbelin. 14th Armored Division, Dachau subcamps. 26th Infantry Division, Gusen. 12th Armored Division, Landsberg. 29th Infantry Division, Dinslaken. 11th Armored Division, Gusen, and Mauthausen. 30th Infantry Division, Weferlingen. 10th Armored Division, Landsberg. 36th Infantry Division, Kaufering Camps. Ninth Armored Division, Falkenau an der Eger. 42nd Infantry Division, Dachau. Eighth Armored Division, Halberstadt-Zwieberge. 45th Infantry Division, Dachau. Sixth Armored Division, Buchenwald. 63rd Infantry Division, Kaufering Camps. Fourth Armored Division, Ohrdruf. 65th Infantry Division, Flossenbürg subcamp. Third Armored Division, Dora-Mittelbau. 69th Infantry Division, Leipzig-Thekla. 104th Infantry Division, Dora-Mittelbau. 71st Infantry Division, Gunskirchen. 103rd Infantry Division, Landsberg. 80th Infantry Division, Buchenwald, and Ebensee. 99th Infantry Division, Dachau subcamps. 83rd Infantry Division, Langenstein. 95th Infantry Division, Werl. 84th Infantry Division, Ahlem, and Salzwedel. 90th Infantry Division, Flossenbürg. 86th Infantry Division, Attendorn. 89th Infantry Division, Ohrdruf.

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Ladies and gentlemen, please remain standing for the presentation of the national colors and the National Anthem.

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O say, can you see,

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By the dawn’s early light,

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What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,

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Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,

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O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?

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And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

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Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

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O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave.

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O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

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Please be seated. Ladies and gentlemen, the Honorable Mike Johnson, speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

Thank you all so much. Chair Eizenstat, Vice Chair Holt, Mr. Foxman, Director Bloomfield, Leader Jeffries, President Biden, and most importantly, to all of our Holocaust survivors, welcome to the United States Capitol. You honor us by your presence today, all of you. Thank you.

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We’re here during the Days of Remembrance and also Jewish American Heritage Month, and on the anniversary of the Nazis unconditional surrender, to remember and to reflect. As part of Congress’ mandate for the Holocaust Memorial Museum, this event is hosted every year because memories teach us. As it’s been said, those who failed to learn from history are doomed, of course, to repeat it. Director Bloomfield has been leading the museum for over a quarter century now, and if you have a chance to go on a tour with her and ask her what keeps her going, she’ll say something like this, which is a certain truth.

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Democracy is fragile. We have to remember that, and we’re all capable of falling prey to our worst impulses. By the turn of the 20th century, Germany was a thriving democracy. They were on the cutting edge of technology. They had a strong economy. They were highly educated, but that did not stop evil and darkness from overtaking that country. German universities like those at Strasbourg were at the heart of Renaissance and intellectual life, but it was at those same elite centers of learning where Jewish faculty and students were suddenly expelled, where anti-Jewish courses were introduced, and where professors performed horrific pseudoscience experiments on Jewish people brought from nearby concentration camps. We remember what happened then, and now, today, we are witnessing American universities quickly becoming hostile places for Jewish students and faculty. The very campuses, which were once the envy of the international academy, have succumbed to an anti-Semitic virus.

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Students who were known for producing academic papers are now known for stabbing their Jewish peers in the eyes with Palestinian flags. Faculty who once produced cutting-edge research are now linking arms with pro-Hamas protesters and calling for global Intifada. Administrators who were once lauded by their peers for leadership are now barring Jewish faculty and choosing not to protect their Jewish students. And these Jewish students are physically threatened when they walked on campus as their peers hold posters repeating the Nazi propaganda in the program the final solution. Now is a time for moral clarity, and we must put an end to this madness.

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We understand that this rise in anti-Semitism comes just after the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, on October 7th. And with our survivors before us, if you close your eyes in the quietness of your own heart, you can almost hear the glass of Jewish storefronts shattered by stormtroopers. You could see fathers being executed at point-blank in the ghettos. You can feel a brother’s hand slipping out of his sisters as men in uniforms separate them into lines, and they can only mouth to one another everything will be okay hoping that it would be. You can hear screams coming from the gas chambers. They last for 20 minutes, and then quiet returns, but only for a moment until a whip cracks another Jewish back. The most depraved parts of humanity are heard in the shouts of little girls and seen in the rings of blue smoke.

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And then you reopen your eyes, hoping the memories of that nightmare will finally go away. But now you’re met with new images of young Jewish girls gunned down at a music festival. Infants, once held tightly in their mother’s arms, are thrown into ovens and cooked alive. Little boys are murdered by men carrying black, red, and green flags. Elderly women are raped not by men speaking German but Arabic. The wail of children pierces through nearby gunfire, a cry that only comes from watching a father being slaughtered. And across Israel, bodies are burned beyond recognition. Just as in 1940, this violence was perpetrated by those who hate the star of David. It is uncomfortable for us to be so graphic, but we must be graphic right now because the threat of repeating the past is so great. We have to remember, we have to look evil directly in the face because some things are so wrong.

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Some are trying to downplay and justify what happened on October 7th. Some are even blaming Israel for the barbaric, inhuman attacks. There are some who would prefer to criticize Israel and lecture them on their military tactics. They would rather do that than punish the terrorists who perpetrated these horrific crimes. In Israel’s greatest moment of need, when it is quite literally fighting for its existence as a nation, we have to do all that we can, everything within our power, to ensure that evil does not prevail. This is a time for all of us to come together. And it’s in these troubling times, we must look to this audience, to the survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants to help us remember and to bear witness. Several weeks ago, I am very proud to report to you that the United States Congress overwhelmingly passed security assistance to Israel to help protect its borders. That’s right.

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We did that together, and we did it because it was the right thing to do. We did it to help Israel protect its borders, to fend off threats from Iran, and Hamas, and Hezbollah, and all their proxies. I was proud to pass that package after months of conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu with the ambassadors, and all the people there who are trying to defend their nation against the threats that are facing them. And now I think it’s very important that we deliver that critical assistance without any delay at all. The reason that act was so significant, the reason that our vote was so important is because, as a Congress, together, we sent a message. We bore witness to the past, and we’ve told the world Israel and the Jewish people are not alone. And we kept our promise that we made decades ago, never again.

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In my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana, there’s a sweet lady named Rose Van Thyn. She bore witness to what she saw in Auschwitz, and she’s gone into classrooms and she has taught new generations of students about the horrors of the Holocaust. With us today is Mr. Frank Cohn. He escaped Germany days before Kristallnacht in 1938. Five years later, he was drafted in the U.S. Army and served in Belgium and in Germany to defeat the Nazis and liberate his fellow Jewish brothers and sisters. Frank, would you stand? Would you stand? Today, we emulate folks like Rose and Frank and all those in this audience who witnessed the great horrors of the 20th century, and we also recommit to the decades-old promise, never again. All of us commit to that, never again. When our government knew what was happening to the Jewish people, when the Axis powers were aligning and invading, we chose to respond only after freedom was lost. Not today. Today we must act decisively in this moment, and we must teach the next generation, correct those who deny the facts of the Holocaust or October seven. We must protect our Jewish students, and we must give our full-throated, unequivocal support to the nation of Israel. And we must all of us, together, call out anti-Semitism in all of its forms without equivocation and

… and without delay. This is our moment. We meet today with the horrific memories of October 7, and with the Holocaust in our mind, knowing that democracy really is so fragile. And we seek to fulfill God’s command to Moses in Deuteronomy as it is inscribed in the Holocaust Memorial Museum: “Guard our souls carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw, and lest these things depart your heart, all the days of your life.” We must always remember and we will. God bless you.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Honorable Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic leader of the United States House of Representatives.

To President Biden, Speaker Johnson, Speaker Emerita Pelosi, Ambassador Eisenstat, Director Bloomfield, all of my colleagues in Congress, honorable ambassadors to Frank, Abe, Manny, Ray, Alfred, all those survivors whose lives we honor, and to all of those assembled for this incredibly important event, thank you for your presence here today.

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Let me begin by making clear our commitment to doing everything that we can, with the positions of authority that we have, in the times when it matters the most, to ensure that never again unequivocally means never again. More than 40 years ago, Congress established the Days of Remembrance and enshrined into law the moral necessity to gather in commemoration of the 6 million Jews who were brutally murdered during the Shoah. Holocaust survivor, author and noted humanitarian, Elie Wiesel, when accepting his Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, said that action is the only remedy to indifference, and he made clear that indifference is the most insidious danger of all.

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This is a day for remembrance and action. A day to honor the memory of all those murdered by the evil Nazi regime. It’s a day to honor the Holocaust survivors, like Eva Cooper from New York City, and so many others who endured and escaped unconscionable atrocities. It’s a day to recommit to the struggle against indifference. As the El Maleh Rahamim prayer, that will be heard today, so beautifully and hauntingly pleads, we gather to ask God to protect and elevate the souls of those taken from our world too soon.

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We’re also here exactly seven months to the day of the horrific atrocities committed by Hamas on 10/7, the largest loss of Jewish life on a single day since the Holocaust. There are families whose loved ones were slaughtered. There are hostages still being held in horrific conditions. And we are witnessing a deeply disturbing rise in anti-Semitism on campuses throughout the country and in the world. This is a very searing time for the Jewish community. Systematic oppression has been a reality of Jewish life for thousands of years. Having to endure expulsions, pain, pogroms, persecution, prejudice, and the horrors of the Holocaust, a previously unthinkable crime against humanity.

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Last Sabbath, Jewish communities across the world read the Torah portion, which followed the tragic deaths of Aaron’s two sons, Nadab and Abihu. During this moment of great vulnerability, Aaron receives instructions from God that he, as the high priest, must carry out, during the Yom Kippur, service. We learn from God and Aaron that Jewish life, practice and community must continue in the face of horrific tragedy. Aaron embodies what it means to be resilient when confronting immense pain.

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Today, in partnership with the Jewish community, we recommit to carrying on with strength and resilience. We recommit to the remembrance of the Holocaust. We recommit to the principle of never again, and we recommit to eradicating anti-Semitism whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head.

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As we lift up the spirit and memory of all who perished during the Holocaust and honor the survivors with us today, let us always place irreversible determination over indifference. The effort to combat anti-Semitism is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue, it’s an American issue. We must crush anti-Semitism along with racism and sexism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, homophobia, and all other forms of hatred together. That’s the American way, together. And together we will defeat anti-Semitism with the fierce urgency of now, that’s a moral necessity. God bless each and every one of you. God bless the survivors. May God bless the United States of America.

Ladies and gentlemen, Ambassador Stuart Eisenstat, chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

For the Jewish community, in our country and around the world, these solemn days of remembrance come at a particularly fraught time. The unimaginable has become a reality before our eyes. What would the 6 million victims of the Holocaust, murdered because of a Nazi racial ideology rooted in historical anti-Semitism, think about its revival in the United States in the 21st century? In the United States whose brave soldiers defeated Hitler’s Nazi regime, and along with our allies liberated the concentration camps.

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What do the aging eyewitnesses, the 245,000 Holocaust survivors around the world, almost 40,000 in our own country, think when they witness a rise of anti-Semitic outbursts, harassment, threats and violence on our campuses? In the land of the free and the home of the brave, evoking what they witnessed as young girls and boys in Nazi-occupied Europe. What did they make of the fact that for the last several years before October 7th, before October 7th, police guards were necessary at synagogues and Jewish day schools and community centers? How do they come to terms with seeing so many young people justify Hamas’s brutality, which carried out the greatest single-day loss of Jewish lives in Israel since the Holocaust? How do we best honor the memory of those who died at the hands of the Nazis, 6 million men, women and children?

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At the outbreak of World War II, September 1st, 1939, there were 17 million Jews in a world of 1 billion. Now, there are only 15.7 million in a world of 8 billion. But sheer numbers mask the loss and the Holocaust of the flower of Jewish religion, culture, the arts, science, and yes, those eking out a living in small shtetls but preserving their Jewish heritage. We should honor them in the following ways.

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First, we owe it to the quarter of a million Holocaust survivors to do all we can to assure that in their remaining years they live in a dignity denied them in their youth. And yet, despite generous reparations payments by post-War Germany, which I’ve helped negotiate, those going back to 1952, today, 90%, 90%, of survivors live in or near poverty in the former Soviet Union, and central and Eastern Europe, 35% in the state of Israel and 30% in our own country, the richest in the history of the world. Joe Biden, when he was vice president, championed a US government program to help survivors. But we all owe it to aging survivors to do more to assure that they are well taken care of.

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Second, we must absorb the lessons of the Holocaust, which began by recognizing that the Holocaust was not inevitable. It was not inevitable. Early action against discrimination and intimidation and aggression is essential, whether abroad or on our college campuses. Hitler’s original goal was not the final solution, to kill all European Jews, rather it was to make Germany Juden-rein, free of Jews. He methodically proceeded, step by step, to gauge German and world opinion to the gradual disenfranchisement of German Jews. And here’s what he saw: No boycott of the Berlin Olympics. No economic sanctions or other action after the Anschluss with Austria. No action with the takeover of the Czech Sudetenland and the Munich Pact. No action after the fierce pogrom of Kristallnacht with thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses torched, and mass Jewish arrests.

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Hitler specifically commented on the failure of the 1938 Evian Conference, called by President Roosevelt to deal with German-Jewish refugees seeking to escape the Nazi’s grasp, but failing to lift immigration quotas. And the barring, in 1939, of the SS St. Louis with over 900 Jewish refugees, waiting for three days to land in Miami Harbor and being turned back. Hitler concluded that the world believed that Jews were dispensable.

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Once World War II began, the Roosevelt administration knew from multiple sources, documented by our Holocaust Museum and other scholars, of the mass murder of the Jews, but failed to take special action to save Jews and other minorities. Our museum’s special exhibit, Americans in the Holocaust, revealed that the State Department kept as many Jewish refugees out of America as possible. And frankly, this reflected the views of a majority of the American public, despite their knowing of and opposing the Nazi terror against the Jews.

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In 1944, in the US Treasury Department in which I had an office, the staff of the Treasury department presented to Treasury Secretary Morgenthau a remarkable report, unlike that, I think, any agency has ever presented to the head of a major department. It was entitled the Acquiescence of This Administration in the Murder of the Jews. The staff of the Treasury department presented that to the secretary. And this finally led President Roosevelt to create the War Refugee Board that saved tens of thousands of Jews. But not soon enough to save the last large Jewish community. In less than two months, more than 430,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz. By the time our brave soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, June 6th, 1944, of the 6 million European Jews who would be killed, 5 million had already been murdered.

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President Biden, and the bipartisan leadership of the Congress, with the leadership of the Speaker of the House, Speaker Johnson, Minority Leader Jeffries, and the Senate, are to be congratulated for taking the lessons to heart of World War II and the Holocaust. About the threat of unchecked aggression, by continuing aid to Ukraine’s defense of democracy against Vladimir Putin who has repeatedly publicly distorted and exploited the Holocaust, and, at the same time, passing aid to Israel at its moment of greatest threat. A threat from Hamas and other terrorist organizations, who do not seek a peaceful solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, but rather to eliminate Israel’s root and branch as a Jewish state.

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At home, the Biden administration launched last year, well before October 7th, the nation’s first national strategy to counter anti-Semitism, involving all federal departments and agencies. And just a few days ago, again with the leadership, bipartisan, of the speaker and the leader, the House of Representatives passed the Bipartisan Anti-Semitism Awareness Act to clarify the definition of anti-Semitism. We thank you. And last, the most lasting way to honor the victims of the Holocaust and today’s survivors, as eyewitnesses leave us, is Holocaust education. To combat those who deny, denigrate, or distort the Holocaust, and to make clear to future generations what can happen when anti-Semitism goes unchecked, which threatens us today. To remember the power of propaganda, first used on a mass basis on radio by the Nazis, but now virulent on our own social media. To learn the need to protect democracy and the rule of law from assault. And the possibilities for each of us, and particularly our young people as they start their life, to make the right choice, to take the path that rescuers took during the Holocaust, that our museum recognizes them. But not to be indifferent or to choose to follow Hitler down the abyss.

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But on these days of remembrance, Holocaust survivors are telling us an inspirational story. It’s a story of resilience. It’s a story of fierce resolve to never give up and never give in. It’s a story of rebuilding. It’s a story of not allowing the trauma of losing their families and their communities, and their abandonment by the world, to deter them from creating a new life with new families, and a renewed determination to follow the Jewish admonition of tikkun olam, repairing the holes in the fabric of the world. You truly are our inspiration. As we confront unprecedented anti-Semitism in our own time, in our own country, to rededicate ourselves to fulfilling Elie Wiesel’s vision that no one’s future should be like their past.

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It’s my distinct pleasure and privilege to introduce a friend of almost 50 years, who is a great supporter of Holocaust survivors. Who entrusted me with the chairmanship of our great Holocaust Museum because he knew that Holocaust justice for survivors, memory for victims and lessons for future generations has been an animating feature of our life. To me, he is not only president of the United States, he’s a mensch, who as vice president, came unannounced to my late wife’s shiva in 2013, and spoke spontaneously and movingly about the meaning of her life. It’s a gesture my family and I shall never forget.

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Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Speaker, Leader Jeffries, members of Congress, dignitaries, and most especially, Holocaust survivors, the president of the United States, Joe Biden.

Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Please. Thank you, Stu Eisenstat, for that introduction, for your leadership in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. You’re a true scholar and statesman, and a dear friend. Speaker Johnson, Leader Jeffries, members of Congress, and especially the survivors of the Holocaust. If my mother were here, she would look at you and say, “God love you all. God love you all.” Abe Foxman, and all other survivors who embody absolute courage and dignity and grace, are here as well.

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During these sacred days of remembrance, we grieve, we give voice to the 6 million Jews who were systematically targeted and murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. We honor the memory of victims, the pain of survivors, the bravery of heroes, who stood up to Hitler’s unspeakable evil, and we recommit to heading and heeding the lessons

… that one of the darkest chapters in human history, to revitalize and realize the responsibility of never again. Never again simply translated for me means never forget. Never forget. Never forgetting means we must keep telling the story. You must keep teaching the truth, must keep teaching our children and our grandchildren. And the truth is, we’re at risk of people not knowing the truth. That’s why growing up, my dad taught me and my siblings about the horrors of the Shoah at our family dinner table. That’s why I visited Yad Vashem with my family as a senator, as vice president, as president, and that’s why I took my grandchildren to Dachau so they could see and bear witness to the perils of indifference, to the complicity of silence in the face of evil that they knew was happening.

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Germany, 1933. Hitler and his Nazi party rise to power by rekindling one of the world’s oldest forms of prejudice and hate, anti-Semitism. His rule didn’t begin with mass murder. It started slowly across economic, political, social, and cultural life. Propaganda demonizing Jews. Boycotts of Jewish businesses. Synagogues defaced with swastikas. Harassment of Jews in the street and the schools. Anti-Semitic demonstrations. Pogroms, organized riots. With the indifference of the world, Hitler knew he could expand his reign of terror by eliminating Jews from Germany, to annihilate Jews across Europe through a genocide the Nazis called The Final Solution. Concentration camps, gas chambers, mass shootings. By the time the war ended, 6 million Jews, one out of every three Jews in the entire world, were murdered. This ancient hatred of Jews didn’t begin with the Holocaust. It didn’t end with the Holocaust either, or even after our victory in World War II. This hatred continues to lie deep in the hearts of too many people in the world and requires our continued vigilance and outspokenness.

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That hatred was brought to life on October 7th in 2023. On the sacred Jewish holiday, the terrorist group Hamas unleashed the deadliest day of the Jewish people sense the Holocaust, driven by ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people off the face of the earth. Over 1,200 innocent people, babies, parents, grandparents, slaughtered in their kibbutz, massacred at a music festival, brutally raped, mutilated, and sexually assaulted. Thousands more carrying wounds, bullets, and shrapnel from the memory of that terrible day they endured. Hundreds taken hostage, including survivors of the Shoah. Now, here we are, not 75 years later, but just seven and a half months later, and people are already forgetting. They’re already forgetting that Hamas unleashed this terror. It was Hamas that brutalized Israelis. It was Hamas who took and continues to hold hostages. I have not forgotten, nor have you, and we will not forget.

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And as Jews around the world still cope with the atrocities and trauma of that day and its aftermath. We’ve seen a ferocious surge of anti-Semitism in America and around the world. Vicious propaganda on social media. Jews forced to hide their kippahs under baseball hats, tuck their Jewish stars into their shirts. On college campuses, Jewish students blocked, harassed, attacked while walking to class. Anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitic posters, slogans, calling for the annihilation of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state. Too many people denying, downplaying, rationalizing, ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and October 7th, including Hamas’s appalling use of sexual violence to torture and terrorize Jews. It’s absolutely despicable and it must stop.

(49:29)
Silence and denial can hide much, but it can erase nothing. Some injustices are so heinous, so horrific, so grievous it cannot be buried, no matter how hard people try. In my view, a major lesson of the Holocaust is, as mentioned earlier, it was not inevitable. We know hate never goes away. It only hides. And given a little oxygen, it comes out from under the rocks. We also know what stops hate. One thing. All of us. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks described anti-Semitism as a virus that survived and mutated over time. Together, we cannot continue to let that happen. We have to remember our basic principles as a nation. We have an obligation. We have an obligation to learn the lessons of history so we don’t surrender our future to the horrors of the past. We must give hate no safe harbor against anyone. Anyone.

(50:49)
From our very founding, Jewish Americans, who are representative of only about 2% of the US population, have helped lead the cause of freedom for everyone in our nation. From that experience, we know scapegoating and demonizing any minority is a threat to every minority and the very foundation of our democracy. It’s in moments like this we have to put these principles that we’re talking about into action. I understand people have strong beliefs and deep convictions about the world. In America, we respect and protect the fundamental right to free speech, to debate and disagree, to protest peacefully and make our voices heard. I understand. That’s America. But there is no place on any campus in America, any place in America, for antisemitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind, whether against Jews or anyone else.

(52:03)
Violent attacks, destroying property, is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law, and we’re not a lawless country. We’re a civil society. We uphold the rule of law and no one should have to hide or be brave just to be themselves. To the Jewish community, I want you to know, I see your fear, your hurt, and your pain. Let me reassure you. As your president, you’re not alone. You belong. You always have and you always will. And my commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, the security of Israel, and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state, is ironclad, even when we disagree. My administration is working around the clock to free remaining hostages, just as we have freed hostages already, and we will not rest until we bring them all home. My administration, with our second gentleman’s leadership, has launched our nation’s first national strategy to counter anti-Semitism, that’s mobilizing the full force of the federal government to protect Jewish communities. But we know this is not the work of government alone or Jews alone. That’s why I’m calling on all Americans to stand united against anti-Semitism and hate in all its forms. My dear friend, he became a friend, the late Elie Wiesel said, ” One person of integrity can make a difference.” We have to remember that, now more than ever. Here, in Emancipation Hall of the US Capitol, among the towering statues of the history, is a bronze bust of Raoul Wallenberg. Born in Sweden as a Lutheran, he was a businessman and a diplomat. While stationed in Hungary during World War II, he used diplomatic cover to hide and rescue about 100,000 Jews over a six-month period.

(54:36)
Among them was a 16-year-old Jewish boy who escaped a Nazi labor camp. After the war ended, that boy received a scholarship from the Hillel Foundation to study in America. He came to New York City penniless, but determined to turn his pain into purpose, along with his wife, also a Holocaust survivor. He became a renowned economist and foreign policy thinker, eventually making his way to this very Capitol, on the staff of a first-term senator. That Jewish refugee was Tom Lantos and that senator was me. Tom and his wife Annette and their family became dear friends to me and my family. Tom would go on and become the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress who became a leading voice on civil rights and human rights around the world. Tom never met Raoul, who was taken prisoner by the Soviets, never to be heard from again.

(55:40)
But through Tom’s efforts, Raoul’s bust is here in the Capitol. He was also given honorary US citizenship, only the second person ever after Winston Churchill. The Holocaust Museum here in Washington is located on a road in Raoul’s name. The story of the power of a single person to put aside our differences, to see our common humanity, to stand up to hate and its ancient story of resilience from immense pain, persecution, to find hope, purpose and meaning in life. We try to live and share with one another. That story endures.

(56:25)
Let me close with this. I know these days of remembrance fall on difficult times. We’d all do well to remember these days also fall during the month we celebrate Jewish American heritage, a heritage that stretches some of our earliest days to enrich every single part of American life today. A great Jewish American named Tom Lantos used the phrase, “The veneer of civilization is paper thin. We are its guardians and we can never rest.” My fellow Americans, we must, we must, be those guardians. We must never rest. We must rise against hate. Meet across the divide. See our common humanity. And God bless the victims and survivors of Shoah. May the resilient hearts, the courageous spirit, and the eternal flame of faith of the Jewish people forever shine their light on America and around the world, pray God. Thank you all.

Ladies and gentlemen, the museum’s Bringing the Lessons Home program introduces Washington DC area public high school students to Holocaust history and encourages them to share its lessons with their family, friends, and community. Now in its 30th year, over 900 students from over 130 schools have completed the program and become museum ambassadors. We are gratified to have six ambassadors taking part in the Memorial Candle lighting.

My name is Maya Riggs and I remember.

My name is Vivian Monaco and I remember.

My name is Anna Lozando, and I remember.

My name is Mia Martin Eskandarani, and I remember.

My name is Sinaya Evans, and I remember.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are honored to have more than 30 Holocaust survivors with us today, and now some will share memorial reflections.

My name is Alfred Munzer. Most of my family lives in a box of photographs that I hold sacred. The box holds a memories of members of my family, most of whom were deported and did not come back. This photo shows my Uncle Emil, my two sisters, my father and my mother enjoying a day in the park shortly before the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and before I was born. My sisters were denounced and murdered in Auschwitz. Uncle Emil was on the same transport and suffered the same fate. My father, after forced labor in several camps, was liberated of Ebensee but succumbed two months later. I will always remember my father Simcha, my Uncle Emil, and my sisters, Eva and Leah. Thank you.

My name is Ray Goldfarb. In my hand is a photo of my mother, Dina, and my brother, Schlomo. This is the only possession that remains from my life before the Holocaust. The photo had been pulled out of the trash by our neighbor who wanted a keepsake of her friend who had disappeared. It was given to my mother after liberation when she returned to our hometown in Poland. My brother was only four years old when my mother placed him with a local farmer, but they were betrayed. The farmer was beaten and my brother was killed. I will always remember my brother Schlomo and the 3000 members of the Jewish community in my hometown.

I am Manny Mandel. The object I hold was my lifeline during those terrible months I spent in Bergen-Belsen. When I became ill, my mother read excerpts from the Hungarian edition of Robinson Crusoe. How lucky I was that my mother was allowed to stay with me and that I’ve been to bring a piece of home with me. Many, including my extended family members, were not so lucky. They were deported, their belongings confiscated before they were murdered. I would always remember my grandmother, Rosa Brown Mandel, my maternal grandparents, [inaudible 01:05:04] and Paula Klein, and my seven-year-old cousin, [inaudible 01:05:08], who were killed in Auschwitz. As we recite the Mourner’s Kaddish and chant the traditional prayer for the soul of the dead with Cantor Zell, I invite you to stand and hold high a photo that’s on your chair. Together, we honor their lives and remember them.

(01:05:25)
[foreign language 01:05:46].

[foreign language 01:06:04].

(singing)

Ladies and gentlemen, Abe Foxman, Holocaust survivor and member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

Mr. President, thank you for standing with us. Thank you. [foreign language 01:10:33]. My dear fellow survivors, we are here again today to stand and bear witness. I was born in the wrong time at the wrong place for a Jewish kid. Nazi-occupied Poland in 1940 was not the best place to be born, yet I managed to survive as a hidden child by the intercession of one special person’s kindness, courage, compassion, decency, and most likely several miracles. As I grew older, I tried to understand what it is that I had survived, and the first set of questions were very serious existential questions of why? Why did the Shoah, the Holocaust happen to the Jewish people? Why did over a million and a half Jewish children perish? Why was the world silent, and why didn’t the Almighty intervene? To those universal questions of why were added very personal questions of why, why me?

(01:12:03)
Why me, and not the [foreign language 01:12:10], the [foreign language 01:12:10]? Why me? In that struggle to understand, two facts became clear. One is that the world knew. The world knew. There was no CNN, no Fox, there were no satellite feeds from far away places. There was no internet, there was no 24/7 news. And yet the world knew. Those in positions of power to make decisions, to stop what was happening, knew. They knew how many Jews were killed in Lodz, in Baranavichy, in Minsk, in Białystok. They knew. They knew what was happening to the Jews. And as Ken Burns and his PBS series revealed to the world, revealed how much America knew and how little it did. So the first lesson for us is to know, to know about anti-Semitism, bigotry, racism, to know who it is that threatens our democracy, our freedoms. It is important that we know. But knowing is not enough.

(01:13:25)
The second thing that became clear to me was that wherever, whenever, however good people said no, whenever good people stood up and said no to hate, Jews lived, gays lived, Roma lived. There was an Oskar Schindler who saved 1,200 Jews. There was a Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved maybe 100,000 Jews. There were 60 diplomats who acted against the wishes of their governments and saved thousands of Jews. There was a Denmark, a Bulgaria, and Albania who saved all their Jews. I stand here today because there was a Polish Catholic lady who could barely read or write, who did not sit down and weigh and measure the risks, and yet risked her life every single day for four years to protect the life of another human being, a Jewish child, and her name was Bronislawa Kurpi. She baptized me, gave me a false identity and protected me from her neighbors as well as the Gestapo.

(01:14:47)
So I stopped asking the questions of why and began to ask the questions on the order of what if? What if instead of one Raoul Wallenberg, there were 10,000? What if instead one Oskar Schindler, there were 10,000 Oskar Schindlers? What if this wonderful country of ours had permitted the passage of ship to St. Louis to dock at these shores and unload his cargo of refugees? What if we bombed Auschwitz? What if Canada had found room for 5,000 Jewish orphans? What if we traded trucks for Jews? What if Switzerland would’ve permitted the entry of Jewish orphans? The Dominican Republic said yes to Jewish refugees. Cuba said yes to Jewish refugees, but America and Canada said no. And sadly, there was no State of Israel to open its doors. Bearing witness also gives me an opportunity to say thank you to my nanny, Bronislawa Kurpi, whom I never thanked and whom I never said goodbye to.

(01:16:13)
Dear friends, the Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers. It began with words, ugly words, hateful words, demonizing, degrading, debasing Jews. And those words became ugly, hateful deeds. We need to speak up and out. We need to protest when anyone who is maligned or treated with contempt, no matter who the victim or the perpetrator, especially now when we live in such super polarized environment, politicized with a lack of civility and a lack of truth enhanced by the so-called miracle, modern miracle of the internet. Jewish tradition teaches us that life and death is in the power of the tongue. Three times a day, Jews who follow that tradition ask the Almighty, “[foreign language 01:17:12],” “keep my mouth from speaking evil.”

(01:17:15)
We believe in the power of words, in the power of good people to stand up and say no. Never again was an 11th Commandment etched in the aftermath of Auschwitz. It was etched by the Jewish people based on a Jewish experience, but never again that pledge, that imperative, that commandment has a universal message and mandate, for all of us today must bear witness and be faithful to the commandments, which instructs all of us to never again be silent, never again be silent whenever anyone is in fear, in danger, isolated, singled out because the color of their skin, their religion, their ethnic origin, their sexual orientation, or anything that makes them different from the rest.

(01:18:11)
Who would have believed that we, the survivors, would in our lifetime bear witness to a global epidemic of anti-Semitism, including in our beloved country? That Israel, the Jewish state, would again be under attack? That the Jewish people would again be under attack? The Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people would again be challenged and attacked? So it is again, our responsibility, fellow survivors, not only to bear witness, but to shout out. For we dare not, dare not be silent. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, Sara Bloomfield, director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Exactly 80 years ago, the war was beginning its long and deadly ending. Our soldiers were tirelessly fighting the Germans who were relentlessly killing the Jews. And yet at the same time, despite the odds, Jews were courageously resisting. Resistance movements in ghettos, organized escapes and uprisings so Jews could flee to fight as partisans. The odds of successful resistance were very, very low, but the determination of the Jews was so very high. This year we commemorate the 80th anniversary of an astonishing act of resistance at Auschwitz-Birkenau, of all places. Some of the Jews who were forced to operate the crematoria mutinied against their SS guards. 45 Jews were killed, including women who had supplied the resistors with explosives to blow up one of the crematorium. 1944 was also the year Hannah Szenes and others from mandatory Palestine parachuted behind German lines. She was captured and killed. She was only 23.

(01:21:09)
Like her, most of these resistors were young. Can you imagine making the decision to risk your life and leave your family and community when they were under such a massive assault and completely abandoned by the world? Throughout the Holocaust, Jews faced endless horrific dilemmas, which is why they’re called choiceless choices. Many Jews resisted in various ways. We do not know all their names, but we do know their deeds and we know the valiant fight they fought for Jewish lives. They remain an example for all time of Jewish resistance and resilience of Jewish determination and dignity. The Hymn of the Partisans, which we will now hear, was written by twenty-one-year-old Hirsh Glick in the Vilna ghetto a year before he was killed. Every time I hear this song, I think about the unthinkable circumstances in which it was written and the continued refrain, “We are here. We are here.” The remarkable story of Jewish resistance remains an inspiration for all times, and especially these times as eight decades later, Jews continue to refrain, “We are here. We are here.”

Please stand for the singing of the Hymn of the Partisans, led by Cantor Sonya Zell, and the retirement of the division flags.

Ready, up. Ready, face.

(singing)