Holocaust Remembrance Day
HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY -- (House of Representatives - May 05, 2005)
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Mr. ACKERMAN. Mr. Speaker, today is Yom Ha-Shoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, and I rise to honor the memory of the 6 million Jewish souls extinguished in the greatest act of organized depravity in history.
There have been many barbaric regimes and there have been many other vicious campaigns of annihilation undertaken both before and after the Holocaust. Some even produced more victims. The Shoah, however, is unique and is thus deserving of special attention, not because the victims were Jews-many millions of innocent non-Jews were murdered by the Nazis-but because the Holocaust revealed a painful and abiding truth about humanity that remains with us. In squalor of the camps, in the ashes of the crematoria, and in the fires of the ovens, it was demonstrated that the norms of civilization, the boundaries of morality, and the protections of society and government are no more protection than a fragile tissue of behavior, one torn aside with shocking ease to reveal the latent bestiality in human beings.
The imperative of Holocaust for us today, as legislators and participants in American government is the same for all Americans and, in truth, all humanity. That imperative is to remember. There are many reasons why: To remember all those people murdered for the crime of their birth and rededicate ourselves to preventing such a crime from being repeated. To remember that bigotry and ignorance can metastasize in politics with horrific consequences. To remember that whole communities can be wiped out with the power of the modern state and to recommit ourselves to the protection of the weak and powerless. To remember all those men and women and children who were cremated and dumped into mass graves, not just to end their lives, but to deny their very existence.
But most of all we must remember because it can happen again.
It is happening again. It is happening in Sudan. Right now. Today. Some 400,000 Sudanese have already been killed and, if today is a typical day, 500 more will join them as the world wrings its hands and wonders what to do. This lassitude, this fecklessness, this disgraceful toleration of genocide is nothing new either. We saw it when there was slaughter in Southeast Europe. And we saw it as a genocide was perpetrated with machetes in Rwanda. And even before the Holocaust, it happened to the Armenians and today we debate whether it ever happened at all.
We must remember the Holocaust because genocide is real. It is not history, it is reality.
Today, genocide is a reality in Sudan. Tomorrow, when Iran acquires nuclear weapons, will we see the mullahs attempt to finish Hitler's barbaric work? Impossible? Incomprehensible? Sophisticated people will ask, "Who would harness the power of a modern state to the absurd goal of killing Jews? Who would risk their state over it?"
We must remember. A world that doesn't keep Auschwitz fixed in its mind will see it rebuilt. We must remember.
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