Mr. President, in light of the upcoming Holocaust Remembrance Day, I want to pay tribute to the men, women, and children who suffered and were murdered at the hands of the Nazis in the death camps across Europe. In 1951, the Israeli Knesset designated an official day on the Hebrew calendar, called Yom ha-Shoah, to commemorate the Shoah or Holocaust. This important day falls on May 5th.
“Shoah” is the Hebrew word meaning “catastrophe,” which speaks to the tragic destruction of nearly the entirety of European Jewry during World War II. Perhaps no other place has been so linked to the Shoah than Auschwitz, the liberation of which was solemnly marked earlier this year.
Auschwitz now symbolizes the horror suffered by millions in an expansive network of camps and sub-camps that stretched throughout much of Europe. Millions of people were deported to these camps throughout the war. Many were summarily executed. Others were worked to death. Some were subjected to sadistic medical experimentation.
The death camp at Auschwitz was at the heart of the “final solution” – the slaughter of innocents for no other reason than that they were Jews. In addition, Poles, Roma and other minorities were transported to Auschwitz and elsewhere for elimination. To put this staggering human suffering into some scale, the equivalent of roughly half the current population of my home state of Kansas was murdered at Auschwitz alone.
Mr. President, I have had the privilege of visiting Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to honor the memory of the victims of Shoah. The legacy of the Holocaust encompasses the memory of those that perished as well as those who survived. The testimonies of those who survived Auschwitz and other death camps attest to the capacity of evil. At the same time, the lives of the survivors underscore the resilience of the human spirit and the fact that good can and must prevail over evil.
Six decades after the smoldering flames of the Shoah were extinguished, we are still confronted with reality that the embers of anti-Semitism could today be fanned into a consuming fire. As Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, I am committed to confronting and combating manifestations of anti-Semitism and related violence at home and abroad. I look forward to the upcoming OSCE conference in Cordoba, Spain, as it will assess what measures countries are or are not taking to confront anti-Semitism. As a member of the United States Senate, I have and will continue to support the vital educational work of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and other institutions.
Mr. President, while the world professed shock at the scope of the atrocities and cruelty of the Holocaust, it has not prevented genocides elsewhere – Bosnia, Rwanda, and now Darfur. We can best honor the memory of those killed during the Holocaust and the survivors by giving real meaning to “never again.”
