The best way to remember the Holocaust is to ensure the survival of Israel, Jack Kemp, secretary of housing and urban development, declared Tuesday.
Kemp urged all Americans to “cherish, protect and nurture” Israel as the successor of the Jewish civilization that was destroyed by the Nazis during World War II.
Speaking in the Rotunda of the Capitol before a standing-room audience that included many members of the Senate and the House, Kemp also called for the immediate repeal of the U.N. General Assembly’s 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism.
During the ceremony, the 10th annual National Civic Commemoration of the Days of Remembrance, Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, received the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council’s Eisenhower Liberation Medal on behalf of all U.S. servicemen who participated in the liberation of the concentration camps 45 years ago.
Harvey Meyerhoff, the council’s chairman, who presented the medal, noted that in three years he expects the ceremony to be held at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum now being built near the Washington Monument.
Benjamin Meed, chairman of the Days of Remembrance Committee, said that he and other survivors can neither forgive nor forget the crimes of the Holocaust.
“The challenge is here, today, for us to write history’s new chapters, and not let others rewrite camouflaged texts,” he said.
The most moving part of the ceremony came when six members of Congress, each accompanied by a survivor, lit six large candles in memory of the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust.
The El Moleh Rachamim was chanted by Cantor Joseph Malovany, of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue in New York, and the Kaddish was recited by Abraham Foxman, vice chairman of the remembrance committee and national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.
The U.S. Army Band played such songs as “Es Brent” and the “Hymn of the Partisans.”
On Sunday, Yom Hashoah, a special Holocaust memorial event was held on the steps of the Capitol in conjunction with similar events held in 22 cities across the United States.
The project, called “Unto Every Person There Is A Name” and sponsored by B’nai B’rith International, involved the reading aloud of a roll call of names of Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
More than 100 volunteers, Jews and non-Jews of all ages, including passers-by, took part.
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.
