Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, 76 years ago today, scouts from the Soviet Red Army pushed their way through Poland. They stumbled on a place that haunts the world to this day--a place of incomprehensible suffering, cruelty, and depravity--Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Auschwitz was the largest of Nazi Germany's death camps--40 sprawling acres of hell on Earth.

Between 1940 and 1945, 1.1 million men, women, and children were transported to Auschwitz from Nazi-occupied lands; 1.1 million were murdered there. More than 950,000 of those were Jewish.

At the height of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp's operations, an average--average--of 6,000 Jews were poisoned and cremated every day in the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz. It was mass murder on an industrial scale.

The first Soviet soldiers who entered Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, were met with an eerie stillness. Most of the camp's prisoners--nearly 60,000 of them--had been evacuated days earlier by Nazis and dispersed to other concentration camps, where they continued to be exploited as slave labor. Only about 9,000 prisoners remained. They were the ones who were too sick to endure the evacuation, simply left there to die-- no food, no water, no heat, no medical care.

In a frantic effort to conceal their monstrous crimes, the SS had tried to dismantle that killing machine before they abandoned it. They forced prisoners to dismantle the barracks and demolish the gas chambers and ovens, but the fires still burned in Auschwitz.

Three weeks ago today, on January 6, 2021, an angry mob attacked this Capitol Building and this Congress as we gathered to fulfill our constitutional obligation to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election. That siege on the Capitol was an attack on American democracy itself. Sadly, it was incited by then-President Donald Trump.

So many scenes from that day still haunt us: police officers trying to maintain order, battered with American flags, threatened to be murdered with their own service weapons; a scaffold erected on the Capitol grounds; calls to hang the Vice President of the United States; a Confederate battle flag paraded through the halls of the Senate--a desecration that never happened during our Civil War. But for many, the most painful image of that day was of a middle-aged White man proudly wearing the sweatshirt that read: ``Camp Auschwitz,'' and then the words: ``Work makes you free''--a translation of the cruel slogan atop the black iron gates leading into the Auschwitz concentration camp.

For one retired dentist and grandfather in the Chicago area, that despicable neo-Nazi hate symbol, shown during the Capitol insurrection, and the chants of ``Jews will not replace us'' 3 years earlier in Charlottesville were shocking reminders. George Brent is 91 years old now, but he was 15 years old and living in Hungary when his parents and his little brother saw a Nazi invasion on March 19, 1944.

Two months after that invasion, on May 19, 1944, Hungarian townspeople sympathetic to the Nazis woke George and his family in the early morning hours and told them they had 2 hours to get out of their home. The family was taken to the Jewish ghetto. The following morning, they and the rest of the town's Jews were loaded onto open cattle cars. After 6 days traveling on the railroad, the doors of the cattle cars were opened to reveal dogs and whips and SS officers barking commands.

George and his father were ordered to walk in one direction. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his mom and his little brother Peter being herded in the opposite direction. He never saw them again. They almost certainly died that day in Auschwitz.

George and his father were spared immediate death because they happened to be strong enough to work. George's father was sent to clean up destruction and carnage in the Warsaw Ghetto. George was given different jobs at Auschwitz. He remembers the smoke that billowed from the crematoria.

In mid-January 1945, as the Allies pushed into Poland, George and 56,000 other prisoners were evacuated from Auschwitz. The emaciated men and boys were forced to walk hours in the freezing cold and snow, clad only in rags and wooden clogs. They called it ``The March of Death.'' A fourth of the prisoners died along the way.

The survivors were loaded into box cars and shipped west. George was sent to Mauthausen, a notoriously brutal camp in Upper Austria. A few days later, he was sent to Ebensee, a satellite camp.

The official policy of both camps was ``extermination through labor.'' It was a cruel mockery of the sign that greeted the prisoners as they entered Auschwitz: ``Work makes you free.''

At Ebensee, George was put to work digging tunnels in which the Nazis could hide their war armaments from Allied bombing.

On May 6, 1945--11\1/2\ months after George was ripped from his home and family, Ebensee was finally liberated by George Patton's 80th Infantry Division--the last of the Nazi camps to be liberated. George was then 16 years of age. He weighed less than 70 pounds.

After the war, George stayed briefly with two of his aunts in Budapest. Together, they discovered their father was still alive but desperately ill in a tuberculosis sanatorium in Munich. Several months later, George was able to visit him. He settled into a displaced camp for Jewish children near Munich.

In October 1949, he moved to America to live with his great-uncle, who owned a small grocery store on the South Side of Chicago. George slept on a recliner chair in the storeroom. He was even happy to be there. He had reached the age of 20.

In May of 1950--7 months after arriving in the United States--he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and served 2 years during the Korean war. In 1951, George's father moved to Chicago, and they were reunited for nearly 20 years before his father passed away.

After the war, George married and raised a family. He graduated from the University of Illinois College of Dentistry in Chicago. He later taught dentistry at the college for 29 years and practiced dentistry for 50 years.

After he retired in 2010, he became a volunteer lecturer at the Illinois Holocaust Museum, where he tells his story mostly to kids.

George Brent is a proud American. He is not really political. But when he saw the clothing and the symbols at the Capitol siege glorifying the murderous Nazi regime, he was outraged. How could this happen in America, he asked?

One effort that I believe is needed--in fact, it is long overdue--is for Congress to pass legislation aimed at addressing the significant threat of domestic terrorism--domestic, homegrown American terrorism. That is why I have introduced the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act in each Congress since 2017. I will be reintroducing it soon in this Congress.

For far too long, we have failed to adequately monitor the dangerous groups that threaten us, the violent White supremacists and other extremist groups. While we looked the other way, the threat grew.

Intelligence experts have now warned us that such groups constitute a serious and growing threat to America's security. Unfortunately, instead of addressing this threat, the Trump administration spent 4 years downplaying it, and the former President made appalling, incendiary, and embarrassing statements that only served to further incite these violent extremists. We can't waste another moment. Congress has to act against this hateful extremism.

As the incoming chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I am going to hold hearings on this matter.

I brought it up to the head of the FBI before. He acknowledged the problem, but little or nothing was done during the Trump years. I trust that President Biden will take a different approach. This is a serious threat to security in America.

I feel badly for George Brent, a man who miraculously survived Auschwitz, the concentration camps, and everything the Nazis threw at him. He came to the United States because he dearly loved this country and the freedoms that are part of it. He made a great life and a great contribution. He still does with his work at the Holocaust museum. Can you imagine what went through his mind when he saw that photograph of the demonstrator in the Capitol--the United States Capitol--with a sweatshirt mocking his life experience, a sweatshirt which bore the words ``Camp Auschwitz''?

It was a sad day for America when that group, that mob, overran this Capitol. I am sorry for the pain that it brought to so many people.

But let me add quickly: We cannot ignore it. It is not a question of getting over it. It is not a question of letting President Trump ride off into the sunset. We have got to come to grips with the reality of what occurred 3 weeks ago today--3 weeks ago today--when we ran out of this Chamber, and we were told to move as quickly as possible with the fear that this mob was going to overtake us and harm us.

After we left the building, they overran this Chamber. They went through the desks. They posed in the chairs where the Presiding Officer is sitting, took videos and photos of themselves and were just dumb enough to put them on Facebook. So we have them, and many of these people are going to pay the price for this criminal invasion of the Capitol that they were part of.

Again, to George Brent's family: I am sorry for what you had to go through. We are better than that. America is better than that. We are glad that you are a part of this great country.

I will work to pass this bill and to get President Biden to sign it into law. And as I do, I will remember George Brent.

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Mr. DURBIN.

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