Bill Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, went to a synagogue in the nation’s capital Thursday to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Standing on the front steps of Adas Israel, a Conservative congregation, Clinton said the admonition “never again” was not just for the Holocaust but “is an admonition for daily living for all of us.”
In his remarks during the ceremony, he emphasized “the heavy responsibility we all have, each in our own way, every day, to try unity over division, love over hatred.”
The Arkansas governor was accompanied by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), who also stressed that the theme “never again” was not only to prevent another Holocaust.
“We say never again to hatred, never again to division, never again to such disorder that leads to chaos and to death,” Lieberman said.
The ceremony was held at Adas Israel after Clinton asked Lieberman to find a way he could mark Yom Hashoah while in Washington.
Clinton noted that each year in his own state he commemorates the day as a remembrance “that the Jewish people suffered a gaping wound unlike that which any people have ever suffered before or since.”
Also in Washington on Thursday, outgoing German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Israeli Deputy Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were among the close to 1,000 people who packed the U.S. Capitol Rotunda for the 12th annual commemoration there.
They were joined by German President Richard von Weizsaecker, who was on a state visit here, and dozens of Israeli delegates who are here for the peace talks with Arab and Palestinian delegations.
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The 1980 Nobel laureate in literature, Polishborn Czeslaw Milosz, read one of his poems from 1943 that was among his anti-Nazi writings while working for the underground Polish theater.
House Speaker Thomas Foley (D-Wash.) and Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Maine) were among a few dozen lawmakers who attended the 75-minute ceremony, which also included several Hebrew prayers.
Mitchell lit one of six memorial candles with Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, which sponsored the event, also presented its annual Eisenhower Liberation Medal to Gerhard Riegner. This was the first time the award went to a Jew.
Riegner is “best known for his chilling cable, ” in 1942, “that warned American and British Jewish leaders about the Nazi program to murder all European Jews,” said Harvey Meyerhoff, chairman of the council.
Riegner, who at the time was the World Jewish Congress’ Switzerland representative, sent cables to Rabbi Stephen Wise in the United States and to Sidney Silverman, a Jewish member of the British Parliament.
At the ceremony, Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk, president of Hebrew Union College, presented Riegner with the original copies of his letters, which had been stored at the Reform seminary.
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