Thousands of survivors of the Holocaust and their children received a pledge from President Reagan last night that their security would never again be in jeopardy either in the United States or in Israel.
The President, speaking to some 17,500 persons at the opening ceremony of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, noted that Jews had recently celebrated Passover which marked the ancient exodus from Egypt.
“You bear witness to a modern day exodus from the darkness of unspeakable horror to the light of refuge of safe havens, the two most important being America and what soon became the State of Israel,” Reagan said. “As a man whose heart is with you and as President of a people you are now so much a part of, I promise you the security of your safe havens here and in Israel, will never be compromised.”
His statement was received with thunderous applause throughout the large oval shaped Capital Centre by the survivors and their children who came to Washington for the four-day Gathering from throughout the United States and Canada.
Reagan also expressed the “gratitude” of the U.S. to the survivors “for choosing America… for reminding us how important it is to remain true to our ideals as individuals and as a nation.”
‘WE ARE HERE’
The President, accompanied by his wife, Nancy, received from Benjamin Meed, president of the Gathering, a Scroll of Remembrance to the American people signed by some 50,000 Holocaust survivors and their children. Meed, saying “we are here,” in Yiddish, declared in English that the journey from Auschwitz to America and from the Warsaw Ghetto, of which the 40th anniversary of its uprising is also being marked at the Gathering, to Washington seems an “in credible distance.”
He noted that 38 years ago yesterday the U.S. Army under Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower liberated Buchenwald. He said the survivors want to give “thanks to the hundreds of thousands of young Americans who fought to liberate us and the thousands who gave their lives to crush Hitlerism.” He pointed out that a major theme of the Gathering is to give thanks to the U.S. for the new lives the survivors were able to build here.
RECALLS A ‘BITTER’ TIME
But Meed also said that there was a “bitter” time when the U.S. failed to take in persons fleeing Nazism and then during World War II it failed to bomb the death camps and the railroads leading to them. He also stressed that anti-Semitism continues now under the guise of anti-Zionism with Jews being attacked in Paris and Rome, Jews being oppressed in the Soviet Union and Israel being “reviled” in the United Nations.
Reagan, in his address, also took note that there was a time when “how we and our friends acted” was “not favorable to our memory.” Following the presentation of the Scroll, the audience joined the U.S. Navy Band in singing “God Bless America.”
U.S. PRESSURE ON ISRAEL CRITICIZED
While Reagan’s speech implied a confirmation of U.S. support for Israel, Elie Wiesel, the writer and chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, appeared to criticize Administration pressure on Israel.
Speaking after the President departed, Wiesel declared that “to remember” the Holocaust means “not to apply pressure on Israel.” He called such pressure “morally wrong” since Israel was the only place to take in Jews when the “world closed its gates” to Jews. “Israel is the only country in the world that is threatened militarily by its enemies and politically by its friends,” he said.
Dov Shilansky, a deputy minister representing the Israeli government, said that Israel now allows the Jewish people to “determine our future.” He said that Israel seeks peace but it can have peace only if it “gives us security.”
Julius Berman, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said that the Gathering was a “commitment to the safety and security of our brethren” in Israel “against all threats and all pressures from whatever source.”
‘WE REFUSE TO FORGET’
While one of the themes of the Gathering was, according to Meed, to “express our close ties with Israel,” its major purpose was to keep the remembrance of the Holocaust alive. Berman referred to this when he said: “Tonight is dedicated to remembrance. We are assembled here to state to the world that we refuse to forget what occurred during those dark days, dark days of destruction and persecution, when virtually no country in the world lifted a finger to halt the mass destruction.”
Rabbi Arthur Schneier, president of the American Section of the World Jewish Congress, said, “To be spared implies the obligation of survivors to remember, never to forget.”
Reagan also stressed this theme in his address. “We are here first and foremost to remember. These are the Days of Remembrance, Yom Ha-Shoah.” He said that “good and decent people must not close their eyes to evil” and “must never remain silent and inactive in times of moral crisis.” But he stressed “what we do tonight is not for us” but for the next generation.
Meed also pointed out that soon all of the survivors will be gone “but we must see that our past is not forgotten.” Menachem Rosensaft, chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, pledged that “we will never forget.”
Reagan, in his address, discussed the stories of some individual survivors and of “righteous gentiles” who sought to help Jews as he has done in his two previous Holocaust addresses in 1981 and 1982. The loudest applause came when he mentioned Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who was imprisoned by the Soviet Union after he saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis. “If those who took him from Budapest would win our trust let them start by giving us an accounting of Raoul Wallenberg,” Reagan declared.
The plight of Soviet Jews was not neglected by speakers at the ceremony last night. Wiesel called for an “appeal so powerful as to break all indifference” toward Soviet Jewry.
The long ceremony included the lighting of six candles for the six million Jews killed by the Nazis by survivors, children of survivors and members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. The audience recited Kaddish and the El Mole Rachamin was chanted by Cantor Isaac Goodriend of Atlanta, Georgia, a member of the Holocaust Memorial Council.
MEANING OF REMEMBRANCE
In other addresses, Berman said the Nazis not only tried to kill Jews but they “attempted to extinguish that glorious chain of tradition that we, the Jewish people, have maintained throughout the ages.” He declared: “We are here this evening to give testimony that that diabolical scheme has not succeeded, and we commit ourselves that it will never succeed.”
Gideon Hausner, chairman of the Council of Vad Vashem in Jerusalem, said that the ceremonies of remembrance in Jerusalem and Washington this week forges a stronger common bond between the U.S. and Israel. He said remembering “is the really true monument to the victims and heroes of the Holocaust, stronger than any brick and mortar because it lives in the hearts of the people.”
A POIGNANT MOMENT
One of the most poignant moments in the ceremony last night was the appearance of two persons who met when the U.S. Army liberated Buchenwald on April 11, 1945. One was Rabbi Herschel Schacter of The Bronx, N. Y., who as a chaplain in the U.S. Army, discovered a frightened seven-year-old boy hiding behind a pile of corpses as the U.S. troops walked into the camp. The other was that boy, Israel Lau, now Chief Rabbi of Netanya in Israel.
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