The rotunda of the Capitol was packed Tuesday afternoon as members of Congress, Holocaust survivors and hundreds of others observed the annual ceremony marking Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Some 800 participants stood silently under the Capitol dome as Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, awarded the first Eisenhower Liberation Medal to American soldiers and officers who liberated the concentration camps in 1945. The medal was established to recognize “outstanding contributions to human rights and freedom.”
Wiesel presented the medal to U.S. Army Chief of Staff John Wickham and to Gen. Lawton Collins and Lt. Gen. William Quinn, officers who played roles in the liberation of the camps, as well as to Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (R. Kans.), who was twice decorated for heroic achievement as a soldier in World War II.
“I can never forget that I have seen them; American soldiers, officers, came in crying,” Wiesel said, recalling the terrible sights that greeted his own liberators at the war’s end. He called the medal an expression of gratitude to “all the officers, all the commanders” who helped bring the nightmare of Hitler’s genocide to an end.
THE IMPERATIVE OF REMEMBRANCE
Addressing the ceremony for the third time since they were initiated in 1979, Vice President George Bush stressed, as did all the speakers, the imperative of remembrance.
“Forty-one years have passed” since the allies liberated Europe. “The youngest of the liberators is in his 60’s now,” Bush observed. “For four decades these men have served–as have the survivors of the camps–as the bearers of witness. They have testified to the full truth of the Holocaust. We must make sure that their memory survives them.”
The commitment to remember drew into the ceremony themes of atrocities perpetrated in the present that Wiesel said “may very well be a consequence of what happened then.” The tragedy of the Holocaust occurred, Wiesel noted, “because people did not feel responsible for one another.” They did not understand, he said, “that evil is contagious, that cruelty, if unchecked, grows and spreads indiscriminately. What happens to one community affects all communities.”
In the case of terrorism, he observed, “Jews alone were the terrorists’ targets” at first. “Now everyone is. From state-tolerated, terrorism has become state-sponsored, state-organized, state-financed and state-planned.”
STRONG CRITICISM OF WALDHEIM
Denouncing ongoing “abuses of man,” such as those against Jews in the Soviet Union, and the continued prevalence of what he called “social cynicism,” Wiesel alluded to recent allegations surrounding Kurt Waldheim, whose activities as a soldier in the Wehrmacht army in the Balkans have only recently come to light. Waldheim is facing a run-off election for the Austrian Presidency, after national elections last Sunday brought him just short of 50 percent of the votes.
“The former highest official of the UN, who is now running for President of Austria, finds refuge in oblivion. What is this if not political cynicism on the highest level?” Wiesel asked. “Has the Austrian people learned nothing?”
GYPSY COMMUNITY IS BITTER
This year’s ceremony was also somewhat marred by expressions of bitterness from the Gypsy community, who held a press conference earlier Tuesday morning. The Gypsies, who lost some 500,000 in the Holocaust, and are said to number about 250,000 in the U.S. today, have been campaigning for representation on the Memorial Council.
Although Wiesel has recommended to the White House, which appoints Council members, that a Gypsy be placed on the Council, it has so far failed to approve a representative from their ranks.
Spokespersons for the Gypsies, who call themselves Romanis, said at the conference that they had considered holding a protest vigil and even taking “legal action” against the Council, but decided to back down when a representative was invited to sit with other Council officials and guests on the podium. They said that even the appointment of one Gypsy to the Council would be “token.”
It was also announced at Tuesday’s ceremony that a day in September will be set aside to commemorate the victims of the Gypsy genocide. In September 1944, the Ziguener Lager, a death camp for gypsies, was liquidated at Auschwitz.
A first-time photo exhibit marking Yom Hashoah at the Capital also featured a portion on the tragedy of the Gypsy people.
ROLE OF RESISTANCE FIGHTERS STRESSED
In another address at the ceremony, Miles Lerman, co-chairman of the Council, who fought as a resistance leader in Poland during the war, stressed the important role of the resistance fighters.
He called for a “concentrated effort to document and record all these acts of bravery, courage and sacrifice” witnessed in the war, as preparations are made for the soon-to-be built Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. “The myth that Jews offered no resistance must be debunked,” Lerman declared.
Also speaking at the ceremony were Holocaust survivors Benjamin Meed and Sigmund Strochlitz, co-chairmen of the Council.
Twelve members of Congress participated in the lighting of memorial candles for the Holocaust victims as Cantor Isaac Goodfriend chanted Ani Maamin, (I believe). Concluding the ceremony was ceremonial music by the U.S. Army Band and U.S. Army Chorus. They displayed the flags of the 10 army divisions that liberated the camps.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
