President Carter announced yesterday that he was appointing a commission to recommend to him an official American memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. The President made the announcement during the White House celebration of Israel’s 30th anniversary. Carter referred to the Holocaust as “the ultimate in man’s inhumanity to man.” The six million Jews killed by the Nazis, he said, died in part “because the entire world turned its back on them.” A memorial, he added, would “insure that we in the United States never forget.”
The President made the announcement about the memorial while telling Premier Menachem Begin of Israel and some 1000 invited guests to the White House for Israel’s anniversary celebration that “we will never waver from our deep friendship and partnership with Israel and our total, absolute commitment to Israel’s security.”
Among the guests were American Jewish community leaders, clergymen, government officials and rabbis. Some of the rabbis had participated earlier in the day in a national religious leadership convocation of some 1000 rabbis at the Lincoln Memorial in honor of Israel’s anniversary. The convocation was sponsored by the Synagogue Council of America.
BILL TO ESTABLISH A MEMORIAL
In a related development, Sen. Wendell Anderson (D.Minn.) introduced a bill last week to establish a U.S. national memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. In introducing the bill, Anderson said: “Most Americans are surprised to learn that the United States, the symbol of freedom and refuge to the world, is one of the few countries in the free world that does not have a permanent memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. This bill will authorize the President to appoint an II-member commission to develop plans for the design, construction and location of a permanent memorial.”
The 17 Senators who joined Anderson in introducing the bill were Birch Bayh (D.Ind.), Lloyd Bentsen (D.Tex.), Lawton Chiles (D.Fla.), Alan Cranston (D.Ca.), John Danforth (R.Mo.), Dennis DeConcini (D.Ariz.), John Durkin (D.NH), Mark Hatfield (R.Ore.), Muriel Humphrey (D.Minn.), Floyd Haskell (D.Colo.), Edward Kennedy (D.Mass.), Howard Metzenbaum (D.Ohio), Claiborne Pell (D.Rl), Charles Percy (R.Ill.), Abraham Ribicoff (D.Conn.), Donald Riegle (D.Mich.) and James Sasser (D.Tenn.).
Mayor Walter E. Washington proclaimed the week beginning April 30 as Holocaust Memorial Week of Remembrance in Washington, citing that it is “important to assume that the world never forgets this act of man’s inhumanity to man.”
Meanwhile, the feeling today in the Capital over yesterday’s celebration of Israel’s anniversary is that while it was warm and cordial, in sharp contrast to the coolness during Begin’s visit in March, the event and meetings were largely ceremonial and no substantive changes have taken place in either the American or Israeli positions in the Middle East peace effort.
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