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Skriven 2005-05-05 23:33:32 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0505052) for Thu, 2005 May 5
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Mrs. Bush Observes National Days of Remembrance
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For Immediate Release
Office of the First Lady
May 5, 2005

Mrs. Bush Observes National Days of Remembrance
U.S. Capitol Rotunda



12:35 P.M. EDT

MRS. BUSH: Thank you, Fred Zeidman and Ruth Mandel, for your leadership of
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Thanks to the Members of Congress who
are here with us, as well as the members of the diplomatic corps. Thank
you, Susan Eisenhower, for representing your grandfather, who was a hero of
freedom. I particularly want to express my gratitude to the survivors and
the liberators who bear living witness to the Holocaust. Your presence is
evidence that good will always triumph over evil.

Four years ago, I accompanied my husband here when he delivered remarks to
observe the Day of Remembrance. My mother was with us that day, and neither
of us knew when we came to this ceremony that the flags of the liberating
units would be brought into the Rotunda. When we saw the Timberwolf on the
104th Infantry Division, we immediately recognized it as the symbol of my
father's World War II unit. It was moving and it brought back a flood of
memories. I'm honored to be here again today this year to see these proud
flags of liberation.

The men and women of the Allied forces were fighting evil and cruelty. Six
million Jews perished in the Holocaust. They were stripped of their dignity
and robbed of their lives solely because of who they were and the faith
they practiced. It was not the first time evil men had sought the
destruction of the Jewish people. Even today, we see incidences of
anti-Semitism around the world. The survivors of the Holocaust bear witness
to the danger of what anti-Semitism can become, and their stories of
survival remind us that when we are confronted by anti-Semitism, we must
fight it.

The scope of the horror of the death camps emerged 60 years ago as Allied
troops liberated the survivors. First Majdanek. Later Auschwitz, Birkenau,
Buchenwald. One by one, the gates opened to reveal the horrors inside, and
then to let in the light.

Survivors stepped forward to describe what had occurred, and then to carry
forward the memory of mothers, fathers, children, and friends who were the
victims. The liberated saw troops wearing the uniforms of many nations, and
viewed them as "angels from heaven."

The liberators brought freedom. They also brought dignity. Men and women in
the camps had been treated as less than human. They were given numbers for
identification. They were deployed for slave labor and tossed aside when
they could no longer work.

When the liberators came, simple acts gave rise to profound joy. A survivor
named Gerda Weissman Klein recalled her liberation in an interview recorded
in this Museum. An American soldier greeted Gerda and asked, "May I see the
other ladies?" After six years of being addressed with insults and slurs,
to be called a lady was an overwhelming courtesy. The soldier asked her to
come with him, and Gerda said, "He held the door open for me and let me
precede him, and in that gesture restored my humanity."

A survivor named Alan Zimm remembers the Allied soldiers who liberated him
from Bergen-Belsen. They called to the people inside the camp in many
different languages, each time with the same simple message: My dear
friends, from now on, you are free.

The liberators themselves remember the scenes. They also became keepers of
memories, witnesses to the evil. Few could comprehend what they saw. Young
men, many in their teens, hardened by years of fighting their way across
Europe, at the camps they wept for the people they met. One American who
participated in the liberation of Dachau recalled that with just one look
at the survivors, he quotes, "We realized what this war was all about."

Many of the soldiers returned home, unable to talk about their experiences
at the camps. The emotions were too raw, the images too painful. Words
could not fully convey what happened.

My father's unit, the 104th Infantry, helped to liberate the camp at
Nordhausen. My father is no longer living, but when I used to ask him about
that time, he couldn't bear to talk about it. I think in retrospect, he
couldn't bear to tell his child that there could be such evil in the world.

As survivors and liberators leave us, the work of preserving their memories
is all the more urgent. Staff and volunteers from the United States
Holocaust Museum have conducted thousands of interviews to gather
information from eyewitnesses. The information is available to all who seek
it. Over the last 12 years, 22 million visitors have walked through the
museum. Each year, 150,000 teachers receive training on how to educate
children about the Holocaust. The museum has sent survivors to speak to
more than 15,000 members of the armed forces at more than 40 military
installations.

The museum is our national effort to honor the survivors, the liberators,
the victims and the families affected by the Holocaust. It's fitting that
it sits on the National Mall, near great monuments to democracy. The
lessons of tyranny and liberty that lie at the heart of the Holocaust
remind us that preserving freedom requires constant vigilance.

Other museums and memorials exist throughout America and around the world.
Some are small and private, located in the hearts and homes of families who
cherish their heritage. Others bring communities together to explore the
impact of the Holocaust.

I learned of the efforts of a group of teachers and students in Whitwell,
Tennessee. Whitwell is a rural town of about 1,600 people, most of them
Christian. Students and staff at Whitwell Middle School began studying the
Holocaust to explore, as one teacher described it, "what happens when
intolerance reigns and when prejudice goes unchecked."

The students at Whitwell had trouble grasping the magnitude of the
Holocaust. When thinking about the Jews who lost their lives in the
concentration camp, one student asked, "What is six million?"

In the course of their research, the students discovered that during World
War II, the people of Norway wore paper clips on their clothing in silent
resistance to the Nazi aggression. Whitwell's students decided to collect
six million paper clips so that they could visualize what a staggering
number six million really is.

They ultimately collected 30 million paper clips. The school acquired a
World War II-era German railcar, one used to carry people to the camps.
Today, the railcar sits on the grounds of Whitwell Middle School, holding
11 million paper clips, to represent the victims of Nazi persecution.

But of course, what's important about the paper clips are the stories that
accompanied them. Eyewitness accounts poured in from survivors and
liberators, from men and women who had never known their grandparents, or
who had lost their siblings. Survivors visited Whitwell to relate their
experiences, and to help ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust reached
even a small Appalachian town.

A center of Holocaust awareness and memory now sits in one of the least
likely places. A movie called "Paper Clips" was produced to document the
Whitwell project. Students give tours of their railcar memorial and pass
along the knowledge they've gained. Teachers from the Whitwell have spoken
to students in German schools, and they visited concentration camps.

When President Bush and I visited Auschwitz, I realized that there are
things textbooks can't teach. They can't teach you how to feel when you see
prayer shawls or baby shoes left by children being torn from their mothers,
or prison cells with the scratch marks of attempted escape. But what moved
me the most were the thousands of eyeglasses, their lenses still smudged
with tears and dirt. It struck me how vulnerable we are as humans, how many
needed those glasses to see, and how many people living around the camps
and around the world refused to see. We see today and we know what happened
and we'll never forget.

Later this week, President Bush and I will visit the Rumbula Holocaust
Memorial in Latvia -- the site of the second-largest massacre of Jews
perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II. Whenever and wherever we
remember the victims of the Holocaust, we deepen our commitment to
tolerance and freedom. In Whitwell, Tennessee, in Washington, D.C., at Yad
Vashem, at Auschwitz -- new generations are honoring those ideals simply by
looking and learning and listening. The voices of the survivors and
liberators will one day be silent, but their testimony will be heard
forever.

Thank you, and may God bless you all. (Applause.)

END 12:47 P.M. EDT

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