Samuel Pisar, the youngest survivor of Auschwitz, and a U.S. citizen by special act of Congress was the personal guest of French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing when the French leader visited the site of the infamous Nazi concentration camp June 18 for a ceremony commemorating its liberation by the Soviet army 30 years ago. During the ceremony. Pisar, who is today an international lawyer in Paris and Washington, issued an address titled “Never Again,” Auschwitz 1975.
It began with the statement; “To return at your side, Mr. President, to this altar of the holocaust, where as a boy of 14 I died so many deaths, lived so many tortures and humiliations, where all I ever loved was reduced to cinders, is an experience that staggers the soul. But it is also a journey from tragedy to triumph. By your presence here today, the date on which from London, 35 years ago. Charles de Gaulle’s call to resistance redeemed the honor of France, you add a new dimension to the historic meaning of the 18th of June.”
Earlier this month, Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D. Conn.) entered this address in full into the Congressional Record. In entering it, Ribicoff stated; “Thirty years after Auschwitz, with the tragic votes in the United Nations (regarding the anti-Zionist resolution)…again sowing the seeds of horrible anti-Semitism, it is essential that the words of Mr. Pisar be read by all, understood by all and followed by all.”
‘WE DARE NOT FORGET’
In his address, Pisar recounted the horrors of Auschwitz and declared: “If they seem relevant today it is because we dare not forget that the past can also be a prologue, that amidst the ashes of Auschwitz we behold the true specter of doomsday–a warning of what might still lied ahead…
“Mr. President, in this cursed and sacred place you are facing your greatest audience. Here you stand in the presence of four million innocent souls. In their name, and with the authority of the number engraved on my arm, I say to you that if they could answer your noble words they would cry out: ‘Never again!’ Never again between Frenchman and German, between Turk and Greek, between Indian and Pakistani. Never again between Arab and Jew….”
Giscard d’Estaing, in his own remarks at the ceremony, stated; “Who can say, even here, that the worst is not yet to come?…We must insure that the youth of the world will not forget this horror.”
Pisar, who was deported at the age of 12 with his entire family, of which he is the sole survivor, escaped from Dachau in March, 1945 and was liberated by the American forces near Munich at the age of 16. The internationally famed lawyer is author of “Weapons of Peace” and “Transactions Between East and West,” prefaced by the French President in 1973. Pisar’s address was restated to President Ford when the American chief executive visited the site of Auschwitz on July 29.
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