Commending Countries and Organizations for Making 60th Anniversary of Liberation of Auschwitz

COMMENDING COUNTRIES AND ORGANIZATIONS FOR MARKING 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ -- (Extensions of Remarks - February 01, 2005)

Mr. DAVIS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, as we convene for the beginning of the 109th Congress, one of our first acts is the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. We remember the heroic forces that brought an end to the brutal atrocities against mankind, and we necessarily remember the death camp itself, the immoral center of last century's greatest genocide.

We understand better today than we did then that the purpose of genocide, racism, of anti-Semitism, is the degradation of the spirit of the victims and their kind. It is the malice of group hatred that reigned at Auschwitz. Consequently, our moral necessity today is to leave bigotry without any safe ground to stand upon. A false understanding of our liberal values sometimes leads us to refrain from attacks on intolerance--the harder truth is that we should put our liberal values in fierce competition with religious and ethnic hatred, and deploy those values to counter the demonizing of race and sects that still goes on.

Freedom is a worldwide value worth defending and expanding. To be won, that struggle too must be informed by remembrance: Freedom fares very well in the tolerant places in the human condition and never lasts long in the bigoted, hateful, mean spirited places.
Mr. Speaker that is one reason we pass this resolution today--to link our current struggles to our past ones.

Never Again, Never Forget

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