Holocaust Remembrance Day

Holocaust Remembrance Day -- (Extensions of Remarks - April 22, 2004)

SPEECH OF

HON. ROSA L. DeLAURO

OF CONNECTICUT

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 2004

Ms. DELAURO. Mr. Speaker, today marks the national commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Today the Congress will stop to remember the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. That dark time in history taught us lessons which we must always remember, and which must guide our future. We know the depths to which humanity can descend; we know how millions of people can embrace evil; and we know that it must never happen again.

Indeed, from that terrible moment in history, the world took up a battle cry against bigotry and hatred: "Never again." As the world's only superpower, it is our responsibility to make that statement an element of our foreign policy. The United States must be ever vigilant in preventing genocide, as we did in Kosovo. We must be willing to stand up quickly and forcefully to the ideology of hate, wherever we find it.

We must be vigilant at home, as well. This vigilance requires us to tell the story of the Holocaust to each other and to our children. We owe nothing less to the survivors and to the brave men who fought to liberate the Ghettos and the death camps. We also owe this debt to the men and women who, in the midst of Holocaust, stood out as some of humanity's brightest lights: Raoul Wallenberg and Per Anger provided nearly 100,000 Hungarian Jews with fake passports and other tools to escape Nazi persecution. Oskar Schindler's employment of Polish Jews spared thousands from death. In Denmark, entire fishing communities helped ferry almost 90 percent of Denmark's Jews to safety in Sweden. These stories must be told.

On this day when the Congress stops to remember the six million people slaughtered in the Holocaust, I hope that we also recall these incredible stories of courage and of the good that humanity can achieve, even in the midst of unspeakable horror.