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April 24, 2025 04:14-05:29 - CSPAN
01:14:50
Holocaust Days of Remembrance Ceremony
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A number of Holocaust survivors are joined by Commerce Secretary Howard Luttnick to talk about anti-Semitism and immigration during a remembrance ceremony hosted by the U.S. Holocaust Museum at the U.S. Capitol.
This is just over an hour.
Ladies and gentlemen.
Alan Holt, Vice Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Good morning.
Special welcome to our survivors.
Exactly 80 years ago today, two weeks before the German surrender, American newspaper publishers and editors began a 15-day tour of some of the recently liberated concentration camps.
They came from Kansas City, St. Louis, Detroit, Minneapolis, Houston, New Orleans, and large cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
At the same time, a bipartisan congressional delegation from 12 different states was making a similar tour.
They were all there not just because the most largest, most destructive war in human history was coming to an end.
They were there because finally the world could now definitively determine if many of the reports about German atrocities could possibly be true.
They had been invited by General Dwight Eisenhower, who just 12 days earlier had visited Auchdorf, one of the newly liberated camps for himself.
Throughout the war, he read the intelligence reports describing the atrocities.
They seemed unthinkable, so he needed to see for himself.
Seeing was believing.
He realized that the unthinkable was indeed possible.
He wrote, the things I saw beggar description.
The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty, and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick.
I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things.
If ever in the future there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda, Eisenhower could not have imagined social media, but he most definitely understood human nature.
We know this all too well as Holocaust denial continues to grow with each passing year.
Just 17 days after Eisenhower's visit to Ardruff, a 25-year-old Polish-born man named Israel Holsecker was liberated by American soldiers.
He had been in at least five different concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dacha.
I would not be here but for those American soldiers who liberated Israel, my father, exactly 80 years ago, because it was in the course of liberation that Israel met another young survivor, Jenny, my mother.
Israel and Jenny, I'm sad to say, are now gone, as are most of the World War II veterans.
I worry that new generations will not understand what was at stake during the war.
For five and a half years, the Germans and their allies waged a brutal military war and a war against the Jews and other so-called racial enemies.
For America, it was a war to defend all the values that our great nation stands for, the founding principles of our pluristic democracy.
Eisenhower invited those journalists and congressmen to see the liberated camps because he knew one lesson of the war must be that the unthinkable would always be possible.
And he also knew that with time, this vital lesson easily forgotten.
Ladies and gentlemen, please stand for the presentation of the flags of the United States Army Liberating Divisions.
1st Infantry Division, Folkenau under Inger.
101st Airborne, 6 Schoenfeld in Spargaard.
82nd Airborne Division, Verbaling.
4th Infantry Division, Dachau Subcamps, 20th Armour Division, Dachau.
12th Armored Division, Lotzberg 29th Infantry Division, Linslachen, 11th Armored Division,
Busen and Mauthausen 30th Infantry Division, Waferlingen, 10th Armored Division, Latzberg 36th Infantry Division,
Kaufering Camps, 9th Armor Division, Falkenau under Eger 42nd Infantry Division, Dachau, 8th Armor Division, Halma Stadton, Siegbergen 45th Infantry Division,
Dachau, 6th Armor Division, Buchenbald 63rd Infantry Division, Kaufering Camps, 4th Armored Division, Fordrup 65th Infantry Division,
Flossenberg Subcamp, 3rd Armored Division, Dora Mittelbaum 69th Infantry Division, Leipzig Techlau, 104th Infantry Division, Dora Mittelbaum 71st Infantry Division, Gundskirjen, 103rd Infantry Division, Lotsberg 80th Infantry Division,
Buchenval and Deimense, 99th Infantry Division, Dachau Subcamps 83rd Infantry Division, Lagenstein, 95th Infantry Division, Verl 84th Infantry Division, Olaf and Salzvaden, 90th Infantry Division, Flossenberg 86th Infantry Division,
Rotten Dorn, 89th Infantry Division Boardroom.
Ladies and gentlemen, standing presentation of the National Colors and the National.
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Ladies and gentlemen, Ambassador Stuart Eisenstadt, Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
Survivors, this past January, along with our director Sarah Bloomfield, I had the distinct honor of leading our Holocaust Museum delegation to the Auschwitz-Birkenau to commemorate the 80th anniversary of its liberation.
High-level delegations from 54 countries, including presidents, prime ministers, ambassadors, and royalty, which included King Charles of the UK, gathered to remember the victims and to honor the survivors to hear remarks from my dear friend survivor Miriam Tersky and several others.
It was particularly moving, occurring against a backdrop of unprecedented Holocaust denial and rising anti-Semitism since the October 7th attack on Israel.
It was also painful knowing that there are only a thousand Auschwitz survivors left.
Thankfully, three of them volunteer at our museum.
These Auschwitz survivors were part of the last large Jewish community to be killed, the Hungarian Jews.
It was the spring of 1944, and it was clear to all that the end of the war was just a matter of time.
Nevertheless, the Nazi regime relentlessly continued their war against the Jews, diverting resources necessary to fight the Allied forces in World War II, just to murder more and more and more Jews.
After Germany occupied Hungary, 437,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz in only 56 days.
While these deportations continued day after day, our soldiers were landing at Normandy, and the Soviets were poised to liberate the Madanic concentration camp in occupied Poland.
And yet the Germans never paused for even a moment.
By the time of D-Day, January 6, 1944, the vast majority of the 6 million Jews and millions of others had already been exterminated.
In January 1944, the senior staff of the U.S. Treasury Department presented to President Roosevelt's Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Morgenthau Jr., one of the most extraordinary reports ever produced in American history.
Originally entitled, Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of this Government in the Murder of the Jews.
It accused the State Department of refusing to facilitate the emigration of European Jews and the Roosevelt administration of failing to disclose information they had on the genocide of the Jews.
At the strong urging of Secretary Morgenthau, when he presented this report in the Oval Office of President Roosevelt, together with the growing public and congressional pressure, FDR finally took belated action on January 22, 1944, to save Jews.
He created the War Refugee Board on which Morgenthau played a major role.
Thanks to their urgent action and the heroism of Swedish diplomat, businessman, and humanitarian Rao Wallenberg, the War Refugee Board saved up to 200,000, mostly Hungarian Jews.
Wallenberg was arrested by the Soviet Union in January 1945 and has never been seen again.
But he is never forgotten.
His role is prominently featured in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is located appropriately on Raal Wallenberg Place.
Understanding all of these events is essential to understanding how and why the Holocaust happened.
The murder of the Hungarian Jews reveals the depth and fervor of Nazi ideology, for sure, to kill every Jew they could.
And that is exactly what the Germans would do for almost another full year until the very last day of the war.
But importantly, the murder of the Hungarian Jews and other Jews and other victims reveals something else, that the Germans needed help.
After Germany occupied its Hungarian ally, 20,000 Hungarian police and gendarmes facilitated the rapid deportations.
The fascist Hungarian government only stopped the deportations under international pressure and recognizing the war was lost.
At the same time, the War Refugee Board demonstrated that rescue of Jews was possible, so choices were made by governments and yes, by ordinary people, all along the way.
Life and death choices.
Even under the extreme circumstances created by Hitler and the Nazis and his allies, people had choices.
There were thousands of rescuers in occupied European countries who risked their lives to save Jews.
And they deserve special recognition and get it in our museum.
But they were a distinct minority.
The Germans knew they could not implement what they called euphemistically the final solution of the Jewish question on their own.
They needed the cooperation of hundreds of thousands of Europeans and yes, the silence of millions of others.
And they got it.
The Holocaust was perpetrated by civil servants, by judges, by lawyers, by police officers, by academics, by doctors, by businessmen, by railroad workers, and by so many others.
The Nazis drove the action, but ordinary people made the killing of six million Jews and millions of others possible, all of whom were targeted by the Nazis for racial, anti-Semitic, or political reasons.
And we must face up to history's judgment that the Nazis also needed the failure of Western European nations and our own great country, whose soldiers heroically did so much to win the war and are represented by the honor guard you saw, to open their doors and their hearts to take fleeing Jews when they could still escape, and they didn't.
As I sat at that Auschwitz commemoration, I thought of all the innocent victims of the Holocaust whose voices have been forever silenced, and the one and a half million children never able to make their mark in the world and pursue their dreams.
But I also remembered the courage and determination of all the survivors who built a new life for themselves and their families.
Troubled world today.
And I also remembered the courage of our own soldiers who liberated the camps.
At the same time, I also ask myself, which companies worked slave laborers to death as they were forced to produce military products to keep the death machine of the Third Reif going?
Who designed the gas chambers in the crematoria?
Who manufactured the deadly Zyclone B gas?
Who made the deportation lists?
Who drove the trains?
Who confiscated the property of the Jews, including their neighbors, in what was not only the greatest genocide in history, but one of the greatest thefts in history, to eliminate all evidence of Jewish culture, religion, and possessions with the same brutal efficiency as the Holocaust itself.
Today on this very special day of memory, there is much to remember.
We remember the thousands of Jewish communities that were destroyed forever and the unique Eastern Jewish European culture that was also destroyed forever.
We remember those heroic individuals who took great risks to save Jews.
And above over, we remember victims, the innocent men, women, and children.
As we remember the victims, we must never forget those who made them victims.
And we must continue to draw inspiration from the survivors, over 200,000 of whom are still with us today around the world.
Now it's my distinct pleasure to introduce our distinguished keynote speaker.
When I began my remarks, I referenced the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
President Trump's delegation to that ceremony was co-led by the 41st Secretary of Commerce, Howard W. Ludnick, whom we're very fortunate to have with us today in the midst of his very heavy burdens.
Secretary Ludnick is also known for his singular humanitarian work in the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attacks that supported the families of those who were killed in his company, in the World Trade Center, including his own brother, and victims of other disasters.
Mr. Secretary, you do us honor by coming.
We look forward to your remarks on this solemn Holocaust Remembrance Day.
howard lutnick ▲ ● ▼
Thank you first to the survivors who honor me with their presence and honor all of us.
We deeply appreciate you being here with us today.
Thank you to the Holocaust Museum for inviting me and for putting together this morning's program.
It's an honor.
It's an extraordinary privilege also to be in the Capitol, a building that stands not only as the seat of our government, but it stands for freedom.
It stands for justice.
It stands for the enduring strength of the American people.
It is the flags behind me, all those infantry divisions and all those armored divisions that ended the massacre of six million Jews.
It is the core strength of America that freed us.
And I think while we stand here today, I think we should remember with the flags behind me how vital and important America is and our armed forces are.
Today we gather to mourn the loss of six million innocent people.
We gather to remember the horror, the horrors that these people lived through.
But we gather not just to remember what happened, but also to make sure, of course, that it shall never happen again.
So this, as was just mentioned this past January, I traveled with my friend Steve Witkoff and we led the American delegation to Auschwitz.
And we marked the 80th anniversary of the camp's liberation.
There are no books, no photographs, no documentaries that can enter your soul the way physically being in Auschwitz pierces inside of you.
Stand beside gas chambers that were designed to kill people.
You stand behind ovens that were designed to kill people.
And you see the fabric of these people's lives strewn in an exhibition to just remind you of how horrible the events were.
Over 1.1 million people, 1.1 million people were murdered there.
Children, mothers, grandparents, teachers, human beings.
And they were all targeted, as we all know, simply for being Jewish.
And there you could feel the horror of it all.
I met survivors there.
I heard their stories.
I saw the tattoos inked on their arms.
They survived and they reminded me of the scale of the hate that can and must be overcome.
The Holocaust was a failure of humanity.
But as we all know, no matter how hard we try, that kind of hatred continues to exist just in many, many other forms.
It shows up in different ways and it shows up at different times.
On September 11th, our country was attacked by jihadists.
These radical jihadists murdered thousands of innocent people.
They killed my brother Gary.
He was 36.
They killed my best friend, Doug.
He was 39.
And they killed 656 of my other friends and colleagues who worked at my company, Canter Fitzgerald, because Canter Fitzgerald was on the top five floors of the World Trade Center.
I lost nearly everyone I worked with.
It was enough really to break anyone.
But we decided we would rebuild in order to care for the families of our colleagues who were killed that day.
On October 7th, 2023, that evil, it surfaced again.
In Israel, 1,200 Jewish men, women, and children were massacred.
Women raped and mutilated.
Entire families burned alive.
254 people taken hostage.
Again, it was coordinated.
Again, it was calculated.
Again, it was carried out with the same genocidal hatred that fueled Auschwitz.
And it's that same disregard for human life that fueled the September 11 attacks.
It's just the same hate.
It just comes at a different time with a different name.
So we have to be clear, we have to be strong, and we have to be united.
America is great because we believe in freedom, we believe in justice, and we believe in truth.
And that is exactly what our enemies hate.
And when those key ingredients of America are tested, we rise.
That's why the flags are behind me, and that's why we stand here in our capital.
We don't run from it.
We address it head on.
We remember it, so we will see it coming.
And we must stop it before it spreads.
So I'm here to tell you in very, very clear and plain language: President Trump will never back down from defending the Jewish people.
Never.
And President Trump stands, stands shoulder to shoulder with the people and the state of Israel.
Colleges and universities that enable anti-Semitism, they will lose our government's support.
The Trump administration will not protect institutions that protect hate.
This administration's promise is real.
It matters, and it's not going anywhere.
This country stands with the Jewish people, not just in words, but in the actions that we take.
Our administration is clear.
Hate and anti-Semitism have no place in America.
We are all honored to be standing beside our incredible survivors who are with us today.
Thank you for honoring us.
We remember the Holocaust and its horrors together.
And we stand as together with the Trump administration.
All of us stand against hate and we stand against anti-Semitism.
Thank you for honoring me today by having me here.
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Ladies and gentlemen, Abe Foxman, Holocaust survivor.
My dear fellow survivors, we are here again today.
Bear witness.
The killing of Europe's Jews ended eight decades ago.
But the memories, the memories never end.
The legacies never end.
And the lessons must never, never end.
After surviving that unimaginable tragedy, the loss of everything we cherished, our families, friends, communities, the betrayal of our neighbors, we worked quickly to rebuild our lives.
We were focused on the future, but the past.
The past was always with us as it is today and as it will always be.
Over the years, it has been deeply gratifying to see Holocaust survivors build an international memory movement.
It has been gratifying to see the creation of many Holocaust institutions across the country.
And it was gratifying that our nation made an extraordinary commitment by creating a federal Holocaust Museum near the National Mall that adjacent to the museums that present the history of this great nation and celebrate human achievement.
Next to them, there would stand a powerful counterpoint reminding the world of the dark side of human achievement.
And an advanced, educated country with a democratic constitution like Germany would launch a world war, one of whose main goals would be to eradicate European Jewry.
Now, here we are in a new century, approaching the eventual end of the eyewitness generation.
And while I remain gratified by all that has been accomplished, I wonder if the lessons of the Holocaust have been learned.
And I'm deeply worried about the future.
I sense I may be speaking for many survivors.
We look around us and what do we see, rampant anti-Semitism on college campuses into cities worldwide in the aftermath of that horrific terror attack on our cherished Jewish state Israel.
We see social media algorithms that promote extreme views, conspiracy theories, and online conspiracy theories are just one click away from anti-Semitism.
An anti-Semitism not so different from the conspiracy theories that permeated Europe for centuries, long before Hitler was born, and helped make the killings of two-thirds of our people possible.
As we look around us, we also see forms of anti-Semitism that seemed unthinkable.
All the cause denial, distortion, trivialization, exploitation, and even glorification.
We look around and see here in America anti-Semitism on both far left and far right.
The 20th century history of Nazism and communism should be an alarm bell.
as just to how dangerous this is, and not just for us Jews, but for all of society, for all who care about democracy, individual freedom, and dignity.
I'm very worried, and I still have hope.
Your presence here today gives me hope.
Thousands of teenagers pouring through the U.S. Holocaust Memorial every year gives me hope.
The teachers throughout America committed to Holocaust education give me hope.
tj english ▲ ● ▼
And the fact that I am here gives me hope, because I am here only because of one Polish woman who made a choice to save a Jewish child.
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Her name was Bronislava Kurpi.
She was my nanny.
Bronislava Kurpi to whom I owe my life.
There were others like her, but sadly, far too few.
The Holocaust teaches us many lessons about the fragility of democracy, the dangers of anti-Semitism.
But it also teaches us that choice is always possible, that silence is a choice, and choices always, always have consequences.
Individuals have more power than they think.
We survivors hope that more people will use that power to confront anti-Semitism and all forms of hatred.
That is our hope and our challenge to all of you on this very special day and on every day.
May we all choose wisely.
We live in very chaotic times where our values, our history, our democracy are being tested.
As a survivor, I'm horrified at the explosion of anti-Semitism global and in the U.S.
And I'm appreciative of President Biden's historic initiative on anti-Semitism and thankful to President Trump's strong condemnation of anti-Semitism and his promise to bring back consequences to anti-Semitic behavior.
But as a survivor, my antenna quiver.
My antenna quiver when I see books being banned, when I see people being abducted in the streets, when I see government trying to dictate what universities should teach and whom they should teach.
As a survivor who came to this country as an immigrant, I'm troubled when I hear immigrants and immigration being demonized.
As some of you know, I was born in the wrong time, in the wrong place for a Jewish child.
Nazi-occupied Poland in 1940 was not the best place to be born.
And yet I managed to survive by the intercession of one special person's kindness, courage, compassion, decency, and most likely several miracles to survive.
As I grew older, I tried to understand what it meant that I had survived.
And the first set of questions were very serious existential questions of why.
Why did the Shoah Holocaust happen to the Jewish people?
Why did over a million and a half Jewish children perish?
Why was the world silent?
And why didn't the Almighty intervene?
To these universal questions of why were added very personal questions.
Why me?
Why me and not the other little boys and girls, the Shleimelech, the Chanalach, the Sarlach, the Moishalach?
Why not them?
Why me?
In that struggle to understand, two facts became very clear.
One is that the world knew.
The world knew.
There was no CNN, there was no Fox, there were no satellite feeds.
There was no internet, no 24-7Us, yet the world knew.
Those in positions of power to make decisions to stop what was happening knew.
They knew every day how many Jews were being killed in Lodz and Baronovich and Minsk and Bialyslak.
They knew.
And for years previously, they knew what was happening.
Ken Burns in his PBS series, America and the Holocaust, told the world how much America knew and how little it did.
So the first lesson for us is to know, to know about anti-Semitism, about bigotry, to know about hatred, to know who it is that threatens our democracy and our freedom.
It's extremely important that we know, but knowing is not enough.
The second thing that became clear is that wherever, whenever, however, good people said no, wherever good people stood up and said no, no to hate, Jews lived, Gays lived, Roma lived.
It wasn't Oskar Schindler who saved 1,200 Jews.
There was a Raul Walberg, you heard a Swedish diplomat who saved 50,000, maybe 100,000 Jews.
There were 60 diplomats, 60 diplomats who acted against their country's wishes and saved thousands of Jews.
There was Denmark, Bulgaria, Albania.
Ironically, it was in the Balkans that a magnificent chapter of humanity was written, not in the capital cities that provide us with philosophy, with music and art, but in the Balkans.
Bulgaria saved all its Jews, not Macedonian Jews, because from the king to the patriarch to the peasants to the parliamentarians, they all said no.
And as I said, I stand here today because there was a lady who could barely read and write, who did not sit down and weigh the measure and the risk, yet risked her life every single day for four years to protect the life of another human being, a Jewish child.
So I stopped asking the questions of why and began to ask the questions on the order of what if.
What if instead one Raul Waller there had been 10,000?
What if instead one Astristian there had been 10,000?
What if this wonderful country of ours had permitted the passenger ship to St. Louis to dock at these shores and unload its cargo of refugees?
What if we had bombed Auschwitz?
What if our neighbors to the north Canada had found room for 5,000 Jewish orphans?
What if we had traded trucks for Jews?
What if Switzerland would have permitted the entry of Jewish orphans?
The Dominican Republic said yes.
Cuba said yes.
American Canada said no.
And there was no Israel.
There was no Israel to open its doors.
So for me, remembering and bearing witness is to make sure that our children and grandchildren will never have to ask, what if in the future?
What if their parents, grandparents stood up every single day to say no, no to anti-Semitism, no to hatred, no to bigotry, no to prejudice, and no to racism.
Bearing witness also gives me an opportunity to say thank you to my nanny Bronislava Kupi, whom I never, never had the opportunity to thank.
Finally, the Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers.
It began with words, hateful, ugly words that demonized, degraded, debased Jews, and those words became ugly, hateful deeds.
In the Jewish tradition, we believe that life and death is in the power of the tongue.
Three times a day, Jews who follow the tradition ask the Almighty to keep my mouth from speaking evil, nitzorlish shonimira.
On Yom Kippur, on the highest day or atonement, we ask for atonement for the sins with the utterance of our lips that we committed by groundless hatred.
We believe in the power of words, in the power of good people to stand up and say no.
Never again, never again was an 11th commandment etched in the aftermath of Auschwitz.
It was etched by the Jewish people based on a Jewish experience, but never again that pledge that imperative, that commandment, has a universal message.
For all of us today must bear witness and be faithful to that commandment, which instructs us all to never again be silent when anyone is in fear, danger, isolated, singled out because the color of their skin, their religion, their ethnic origin, their sexual orientation, or anything, anything that makes them different from the rest.
Shockingly, we survivors are today bearing witness to global epidemic of anti-Semitism.
Israel, the Jewish state, is again under attack.
Israel has become the Jew amongst the nations, the only country that has to defend its right to defend itself.
Zionism, the National Liberation Movement of the Jewish People, is again under attack and has become a dirty word.
So it is again our responsibility, survivors, to bear witness.
And we dare not.
We dare not be silent.
These United States Army officers are participants in a museum leadership program that has included over 800 U.S. military service members.
Through examination of the Holocaust, they gain insight into their own professional and individual responsibilities.
I'm Major Rufus Allen.
I remember.
I am Major Keaton Troy.
I remember.
Major Zachary Trevathan, I remember.
I am Major Danielle Haynes.
I am Major Alexander Manavi, and I remember.
I am Major Emily Berrick.
I remember.
I am Captain Rebecca Melendez.
I remember.
remember.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are honored to have more than 30 Holocaust survivors with us today.
And now, some will share memorial reflections.
My name is Louisa Lawrence Isaels.
Due to bravery, resourcefulness, and sheer luck, I survived with my parents, brother, and dear friends.
We hid in an attic for over two years.
The image I hold depicts two of my relatives enjoying a wonderful day at the beach.
Looking at this is bittersweet.
I'm grateful to have this photo, but I'm very saddened that I never got the chance to meet them.
That opportunity was ripped away from me when the Nazis occupied my country, the Netherlands, and began deporting its Jews.
Both of them were deported to Auschwitz in 1944 and murdered.
I honor and remember my great-aunt Grasina Vilana Homperz-Polak and Eddie Bayrend-Hompertz, my cousin.
My name is Joan Da Silva.
Pictured here relaxing on the rolling hills of Poland are my mother, my two aunts, and my grandmother.
Only my mother survived the Holocaust.
My aunt Lola disappeared shortly after the Germans occupied my hometown of Czemysz, Poland.
My aunt Lunja was betrayed while in hiding and was shot and killed.
Even though my family got false IDs for protection, my grandmother refused to leave the ghetto and was later murdered.
This image fills me with a mixture of rage and grief.
I never had a chance to get to know them or myself for that matter.
At age five and a half, I had to pretend I was someone else in order to survive.
Everything was taken away from me before I had a chance to get my bearings in this world, and I still feel the effect today.
I remember my grandmother, Rosa Adolf, and my aunts, Lola and Luña Adolf.
My name is Peter Fardell.
Although I was born in Germany, I spent most of the war years in France trying to stay one step ahead of the Nazis.
On August 26, 1942, while I was away at a Quaker summer camp, my parents were arrested.
I began writing a diary dedicated to them the very next day.
I hope to tell them about my life during their absence when we were finally reunited.
Here you see a page from my diary with photos of my parents.
The reunion I so desperately longed for never happened.
My parents were deported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.
Had it not been for the help of strangers, I might have suffered the same fate.
I remember my parents, Ernst Feigl and Agnes Bornstein Feigl.
My name is Robert Teitel.
My father, whose portrait you see here, was questioned by the Gestapo in 1935 while traveling from the Netherlands to Wuppertal, Germany, to show support for workers who were arrested for protesting Nazi policies.
Although he was released without incident, his record made him a target.
Just before the German authorities began deporting Jews from the Netherlands in the summer of 1942, my father was arrested, sent to the Madhausen concentration camp.
He was executed the day after he arrived.
Fearing for my safety, my mother placed me in hiding with strangers in Amsterdam.
I was just one year old.
I do not have any memories of my father, and it hurts.
But I am grateful to have this portrait of him.
Today and every day, I honor the memory of my father, Abraham Manu Taitel.
My name is Nat Shafir.
In November of 1942, local priest with whom we had a great relationship showed up at my family dairy farm in Romania.
This time, however, he came only to hand us over to the authorities.
Our family had four hours to pack our belongings.
We took with us this Haggadah.
We used every Passover.
My father and I later hid it with other Jewish ritual items in a bumped-out building the day before he was deported to a forced labor camp, leaving me to care for my mother and two of my sisters.
I was seven years old at the time.
Fortunately, my father survived and recovered these family treasures.
It is especially meaningful to stand before you today and lead the Mourners Kadish, as today is also my father's Yosait.
I will be reciting the Kaddish for him and for six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust, including 32 members of my extended family.
I invite you to please stand and join me reciting the Mawas Kadish Sheme Rabba Almagrafane Karev NE SHI CHAI Khayachon UGY Mechon Khayya Khodbet Israel.
Bagala Mizman Karif Munumar Amain Yehlam Rabba, MIN Shemaya Chaim TOVI Maleinu VA KOLI Israel.
VINU MAIN USE LAMB Ramal WIYA Sesha Malaynu AKOL Israel.
Please remain standing as Chazan that will chant the traditional prayer for the soul of the dead Kelma Racham.
I invite you to hold high the photo that's on your chair.
Together we honor their lives and remember them.
Yeh Zohram Baruch, Am Yisrael Chai.
Shane Hergu, Shanish Chatu, Shenis Refu Vishnis PU AL Kidushashe Bamrozechima, Germanima Wasrahim Misha, Ramim Be Aushwitz,
Reblinka, Maidane, Bergen-Bels, Sobibul.
Yastire, Meseter Ginafami Unamim Fitzrimit Nishmatehim Adono UNA Beganede.
Please be seated.
Ladies and gentlemen, Sarah Bloomfield, director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
With Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism flourishing around us, the wisdom of our survivors is more important than ever.
Here is Primo Levy.
He said, We must be listened to.
Above and beyond our personal experience, we have collectively witnessed a fundamental, unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone.
It happened, therefore it can happen again.
This is the core of what we have to say.
And here is Steffa Kupfer on how she survived in hiding.
Here's what she said.
My mother was very Orthodox.
Mrs. Orlewska was deeply religious and respected my mother's religion.
So she took one pot, which she scrubbed real good.
She cooked potato soup for us every day.
My mother didn't have any unkosher food for the duration of the hiding.
And my mother would say, take a little money when you go to mass and give it to the poor.
And Mrs. Orlewska would say, there are no poorer people than you.
Your children have no fresh air.
You have no light.
You have no freedom.
Nobody is poorer than you.
She wouldn't take a penny, never.
She did it out of the goodness of her heart.
And after liberation, she says, please don't stay in touch with me.
Don't ever come back.
I don't want my neighbors to see you.
I am afraid for the safety of my life.
My people will not forgive me for saving a Jewish life.
Like her neighbors, Mrs. Orlewska was exposed to the anti-Semitism that was rampant across Europe for centuries.
So why?
Why did she choose to not let that disease infect her?
And why did she choose to do more than that?
To risk her life to save Steffa and her mother.
What made Mrs. Orlewska and the other helpers different?
They were from every country, every religious background, and every political persuasion.
Why were they not influenced by the hatred, propaganda, peer pressure, and greed all around them?
The warning of Primo Levy, the gratitude of Steffa, and the actions of Miss Zarlewska stand for all time, reminding us of what happened and what can happen, and asking each of us this fundamental question: Now that you know, what will you do?
for the singing of the Hymn of the Partisans, led by Hassan Elisheva Dinsvray and the retirement of the division flags.
Never say this is the final road for you.
Though leading skies may cover all our days of blue, as the awe that we longed for is so near.
Our step beats out the message: we are here.
As the author that we longed for is so near.
Our step beats out the message: we are here.
From lands so green with palms to lands so white with snow.
We shall be coming with our anguish and our woe.
And we're the spirit of our bloodful on the earth.
There, our courage and our spirit have reverted.
And we're the spirit of our bloodful on the earth.
And their spirit
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our program.
Thank you for sharing our national commitment to Holocaust remembrance.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. to across the country.
Coming up this morning, author and Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies lecturer Charles Stevenson talks about changes to the Pentagon in President Trump's first 100 days under Defense Secretary Hegsef.
And then University of Pennsylvania economics professor Jesus Fernandez Villa Verde on the implications of declining U.S. fertility rates and global trends.
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At 3.15 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Yurgeva and other international financial figures will debate the global economic situation.
On C-SPAN 2 live at 8 a.m. Eastern, IMF Director Kristalina Urageva will hold a press conference following their 2025 spring meeting.
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Pope Francis is lying in state over the next few days at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican until his funeral early Saturday morning in St. Peter's Square.
President Trump and other world leaders are expected to attend.
The first Latin American pontiff died on Easter Monday at the age of 88.
Our live coverage begins Saturday morning at 4 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, and on our website, c-span.org.
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Minnesota Governor Tim Walz touted his state's standard of living and addressed budget negotiations during his annual state of the state address from the Capitol building in St. Paul.
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