[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 5 (Tuesday, January 25, 2005)] [Senate] [Pages S375-S376] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, historians Will and Ariel Durant have told us, ``The present is the past rolled up for action and the past is the present unrolled for understanding.'' In our search for understanding and guidance for our actions, we are pausing today to commemorate one of the darkest moments of modern history, the Nazi Holocaust, the effort by the Nazi regime to exterminate the Jewish people. Six million Jews were sent to their death before the end of the death camps. Sixty years ago today, the Auschwitz death camp was liberated, bringing an end to the slaughter of well over 1 million people at that location alone. As unfathomable as that reality is, we need to seek to understand it in order to prevent it. I am not sure if we can ever truly understand it. In some ways it is kind of bizarre, but we need to understand that while genocide in Germany, Cambodia, Rwanda, and elsewhere may end up as a kind of mass insanity in some almost bizarre way, it begins in a terribly misplaced idealism. The Khmer Rouge thought that returning Cambodia to its rural beginnings was the way to create a good society. They became so convinced that modernity was destroying their people that they attempted to forcibly empty the cities and kill anyone with a professional degree or anyone who even wore glasses. They even kept careful records of those they killed because they assumed history would honor them for their actions. The Germans kept records, too. It is difficult for me to fathom they would believe that history would honor them for their actions. The situation in Rwanda dates back to the colonial period, when European colonial powers favored Tutsis over Hutus. When independence was hastily granted and the Europeans departed, a seesaw of vengeance and reprisals began, which escalated unchecked for 30 years. When historic anger boiled over, with the failure of the international community to step in, a terrible period of violence claimed over half a million people. The fact that genocide could happen in an industrialized, cultured nation that had produced Beethoven and Goethe is especially chilling. As we read the various accounts of what was happening in the Third Reich, it astounds us that people could come to such conclusions. It astounds us that so many good people could do nothing, did nothing. While millions were slaughtered, they turned their backs and shut their eyes. Auschwitz was not conceived as a death camp. It was part of Hitler's and Albert Speer's master plans for bold new Nazi ``Cities of the East'' that would express their vision for society. Such projects required slave labor for which Jews and others were likely candidates. The rise of democratic socialism in Germany was in part a reaction to their hatred of communism in the Soviet Union. So they had a strategy to empty the lands of Poland and Russia for resettlement by an expanded Germany. Such was their grandiosity that human beings became objects to be used for their plans and obstacles to be destroyed. They dehumanized the Jewish people. The lessons of these three examples is: Hatred combined with any number of other circumstances can explode into genocide. Even as the situations in Darfur and elsewhere continue, we would be naive and foolish to believe that mankind has ``learned its lesson.'' [[Page S376]] First, we need to go on the moral offensive whenever hatred arises. That is why I have risen on the floor several times to decry the growth of antisemitism in Europe. Even on American college campuses, antisemitism is raising its ugly head today. We need to speak out. We need to put a cork in the bottle. We need to make sure it does not spread. Second, I think we need to understand that with American power comes responsibility. In concert with our allies in the U.N., we must be prepared to intervene when we can to prevent bad situations from going over the abyss into genocide. Diplomacy is by its nature slow and cautious while situations such as these are fast moving and can degenerate overnight. We need to find ways to respond quickly. The history of the quick action of the British in 1941 to stop the Farhud, a genocidal program against Iraqi Jews, is an event deserving more attention and more study. There is one other reason for us to focus on these monstrously evil events. They provide stirring examples of the nobility and resiliency of human beings as well: The story of ``Schindler's List'', the compassionate soldiers who liberated the concentration camps. Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, and were able to save about 7,000 prisoners from certain death. The stories of surviving prisoners themselves are remarkable. Those who managed to maintain their humanity in the most inhumane of circumstances inspired us all. Victor Frankl offered this recollection: We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. Frankl also wrote: A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final truth by so many thinkers. The truth that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. The Holocaust and similar events discourage us with the realization of the extent of evil of which people are capable, and we must guard against it vigilantly. But they also display the highest and best human beings can rise to, which gives us courage and hope. We will never, ever forget man's inhumanity to man in the Holocaust. We reflect on the liberation of Auschwitz, so we assure that we never forget. But at the same time we have a sense of courage and hope that in the worst of circumstances man can still turn to love and to faith and to salvation. Mr. President, I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming. Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, how much time do we have on our side? The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 11 minutes 50 seconds remaining. ____________________