The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S12106-S12109 on Aug. 9, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS
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REMARKS BY HADASSAH LIEBERMAN, A U.S. DELEGATE TO THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY
COMMEMORATION OF THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ
Mr. DODD. Mr. President, earlier this year, the world commemorated the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. A delegation of Americans, along with delegations from all over the world, attended memorial services at Auschwitz and in Birkeneau--services to remember those who had died, not just the individuals, but the entire peoples, and the disgust of their torture and annihilation.
But the tragedy of the Holocaust is one we must remember every day, not just on the anniversaries of its specific elements. Because the survivors of this horror, and their children, live with it every day. Soon, they will be gone. We must remember for them. And we, the greatest democracy on Earth, must remember for the world. Only if we remember, will the Holocaust occur never again.
So today, Mr. President, I wish to share with my colleagues and the American people the remarks of Hadassah Lieberman, who was one of the U.S. delegates to the 50th anniversary commemoration. Most of us know Hadassah as the wife of our good friend and my fellow Senator from Connecticut. But Hadassah is also the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Her father escaped; her mother was liberated from Auschwitz. They survived to tell the stories. Millions did not.
Mr. President, no matter how many times one listens to accounts of atrocities committed during the Holocaust, the stories remain just as awful, just as horrid, as the first time they are heard. I remember the outrage I felt, sitting around the dinner table, at stories recounted in letters from my father, who served as the executive trial counsel at the Nuremberg trials. So we should be grateful to Hadassah for writing about her intensely personal feelings as she reflected on her mother's stories, the crimes endured by her people, and her triumph in being alive 50 years later.
Indeed, I am glad Hadassah is present to share her experience with us, and I ask to have her accounting printed in the Record.
The material follows:
Journey to the Planet of Death--A Daughter of Survivors Visits the
Hearth of the Holocaust
(By Hadassah Freilich Lieberman)
It was a Thursday morning, January 19th, and I was at work when the call came from the White House. Would I join the American delegation to the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz? The invitation took my breath away, and in a cracked voice I responded, ``If I can go...I have to go.''
My first thoughts were of my schedule, job, six-year old daughter Hana, and my husband, Joe. The delegation was leaving in just five days. Not much time to prepare for what might be the most important journey of my life, for my mother, Ella Wieder Freilich, is an Auschwitz survivor.
From childhood, I had heard her intersperse stories of that distant, horrific concentration camp in our everyday American lives. I always listened deeply, although she may have thought from my body language that I was removed. I was always afraid she might cry too much if she continued her dark memories...but the dreadful story would end abruptly and we would continue the usual discourse about meals, or clothes, or schools. The stories were seemingly disconnected, plucked at random from her memory, but I had the feeling there was much more there, left unsaid, in the dark, behind curtains--memories that she could not, and perhaps still cannot, find herself.
As for my father, Rabbi Samuel Freilich, he was headed for Auschwitz when he organized an escape of 20 men from a forced march of slave laborers. He confronted memories of the Holocaust head on, and wrote a book about it called ``The Coldest Winter.'' But the experience of putting the story on paper seemed to drain him of life, and he died soon after its publication.
He and my mother survived Auschwitz. Most of their relatives and friends did not.
Yet when the call came, I had not been thinking about the upcoming anniversary. I don't spend my life contemplating these things all the time, despite (or because of?) the fact I am the daughter of survivors. My very existence is a testimony to survival, and there has always been an undercurrent of striving to be strong and successful in my life (a trait I've seen in many children of survivors). But the specific thought of the Holocaust is not often at the front of my mind. I had never been to any of the camps, and had not planned to go. The only place I did visit was Czechoslovakia, because I wanted to go to places where my family had lived and where I was born. I didn't have a desire to go to the places where my family was sent to die.
So the invitation took me by surprise. The mundane logistical problems associated with a major trip mixed with the painful memories, made it difficult to decide whether to go. I called my mother, who now lives in Riverdale, New York, and she was very apprehensive. She feared for my safety. Who will go with you? Who will you stand with at the ceremony? Why is it necessary for you to go?
But in the end I concluded that she is why it was necessary for me to go. She and my father and their relatives and friends. As I said when the call first came: I had to go.
These were my thoughts along the way:
Tuesday, January 24: In-flight to Frankfurt
The last few days, the only preparation time I have, I cry often. I call Auschwitz survivors, friends of my mother, for words of support and connection. For the most part, they remain quiet, saying simply, ``Go in peace. Bring back peace.''
I am on a Delta flight and I've just finished reading some articles from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial in Washington--excruciating material--describing concentration camps in the vicinity of Auschwitz and Birkeneau. I wipe the tears from my eyes, mesmerized by this world of cruelty and torture, realizing I am soon to visit this symbol of all evil.
The descriptions of the concentration camps are incomprehensible--they are of another world, another place. The screen above me plays out O.J. Simpson's trial, Japan's earthquake. I watch the survivors from Japan and wonder, how can you not feel for these people? How can you not feel for their homelessness, their cold, their devastation...and I don't understand what happened in these camps.
I find myself looking at a picture of Joe in The Washington Post...sweet darling...The picture make me feel stronger. Now Newt Gingrich on the screen. And Chris Dodd. The world is so intrusive and me...makes it hard to come back...so I drink another glass of wine.
Before I left, my mother asked me to bring back dirt from Auschwitz. Nearly all of her family was burnt and pulverized into that dirt, that stinking evil earth. . . .do you bring it home? Is this their grave, entire families? Where are they buried? The ovens? The crematoria? The pits? Fifty years later the stench and screams will not be there.
How evil can people be? Watch the news and you see in small snippets: Chechnya, Bosnia, the Middle East. But the sheer enormity of this evil that I am traveling to witness is incomprehensible. The enormity and the organization of it all. I know there are criminals who do ugly, horrible things every day. But the Holocaust was the product of a whole criminal society, a society of people who were educated, literate, loved music, loved art, loved literature. And look what they did with such efficiency, with so little evidence of guilt.
wednesday, january 25: frankfurt, germany and warsaw, poland
A 3-hour layover in the morning in Frankfurt at the new, empty airport. So empty and antiseptic it is somehow scary to me. All the signs are in German. It is my first time in Germany, and I'm feeling guarded inside myself. I speak mostly with a woman from the State Department, telling her about my background, my mother. I pick up the newspaper, the Frankfurter, Allgemeine, Zeitung, and there is a picture of Hitler. It was taken in 1944, and he looked tired, old. It shows him viewing something with a magnifying glass. He knew then his war was failing. But he pushed on with the Final Solution, as furiously as ever. It was 1944 that my mother was herded to the camps. Even as the war effort was faltering, the Nazis pressed on to kill the Jews because it was an ideology, to them, a mission above and beyond the war itself.
In the afternoon, we fly to Warsaw and are picked up by embassy people there and brought to the Marriott hotel, where delegates from around the world are also arriving. That evening, I go to a reception at the residence of the U.S. Ambassador to Poland, Nicholas Rey, along with some of the other members of our delegation, including: Miles Lerman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and his wife Chris, an Auschwitz survivor; Ambassador John Kordek, now with DePaul University; and Jan Nowak, director of the Polish American Congress. The head of our delegation. Mobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke are to join us the next day.
We begin to talk about the controversy surrounding the ceremony planned for Friday. Since the Communists left, the Poles have been more open about the Jews in the camps. But Auschwitz was initially for Polish political prisoners. Poles look at Auschwitz as a national shrine and museum. And it seems as though they wanted the commemoration to be more of a generic event, with no special emphasis on Jewish deaths. No praying of the Kaddish. In response, some are planning an alternative service on Thursday at Birkeneau. Preposterous, but true, Elie's words ``not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims'' need to be repeated over and over again.
I am concerned about the controversy but, at the same time, I do not want to lose sight of the larger reason for our being there. I am moved to say that I understand there's controversy around us. But we should not forget how incredible it is that we're all here together, from all over the world, to commemorate something that happened 50 years ago that, at the time, nobody wanted to hear about. We need to talk about the details, but we should not lose sight of the fact that we're here as representatives of our country, bearing witness to what happened to so many people.
We decide that those of us who wanted to go to alternative service will meet the next morning in a hotel lobby. I have mixed feelings. As a Jew and the daughter of survivors, I want to go to Birkeneau. As a member of the official American delegation, I am worried that it might detract from protocol if I deviate from the schedule, which includes a ceremony at Jagiellonian University in Krakow. But everyone assures me that the American delegation will be sufficiently represented at the university.
thursday, january 26: warsaw, krakow, birkeneau, auschwitz
We arrive in Krakow, a city left untouched by bombing. Some say it is a ``small Prague.'' Krakow; over 25% of its population was Jewish and 90% of its Jews were annihilated. Now tours are advertised to show where Spielberg filmed in the Jewish ``ghetto'' area. The Ariel Cafe is booming with Eastern European/Jewish foods and Yiddish music. The synagogue is old--dating back to the 1400's. Stone markers from Jewish cemeteries are preserved as part of the wall.
I check into the Forum Hotel in the city. Leaders from all over the world are arriving. . . Ambassadors, Presidents, Kings, Prime Ministers. Security measures are being put into place. Metal detectors put together. Dogs were brought in. I find real irony in the contrast: here it is fifty years later, and all the forces of authority are being marshalled for our protection, whereas before they would have come to seep us up.
All the security precautions also remind me of my mother's concerns for my safety. I don't personally feel threatened, but I begin to realize what she was talking about. I understand we have to be careful, and I know what she felt about my coming here, and how horrible it would be if something happens to me where so much had happened to her. The double-suicide bombing in Israel occurred just days before, reminding us that, for Jews, the world can still be a very dangerous place.
News of the alternative ceremony has been spreading by word-of-mouth, and interest in it grows. Originally planned by Jewish organizations and Israelis, it takes on a life of its own, and suddenly includes everyone. Not only the American Ambassador and other delegates from the American group, but every delegation from around the world decides to send representatives.
And so I go to Birkeneau, 50 years after my mother left.
No one bombed the tracks then. No one ``knew.'' No one seemed to care, or reach out. And now, all the nations of the world are represented as the buses travel to Birkeneau. We travel with the Israeli delegation in front of us, escorted by heavy security. Elie Wiesel, Ambassador and Mrs. Rey, Jan Nowak (who tells me he will go because he must go as a Pole and a Catholic. He was one of the first to alert British leaders to the tragedy of the Holocaust in World War II).
Our bus pulls into a large parking area and we exit along with hundreds and hundreds of others. We begin to walk in our own groups. I walk with Elie Wiesel, the Ambassador and his wife, and the others over the rocky, muddy ground. I am arm in arm with Sigmund Strochlitz of Birkeneau and Connecticut, a friend of Elie's. He reminds me a little bit of my father.
Where are we? I look around and there are mobs of people around us walking in stony silence. We were warned about the coldness of the camps. But the weather is warm in Krakow . .
. until we walk further into the camps and then the coldness begins to set in--a different kind of coldness, eerie . . . heavy. Suddenly, I realize we are walking near railroad tracks and Sigmund begins to speak. ``This was where the train ran into the camp. The train was able to take people straight to the end--to the crematoria.'' This is Birkeneau, a death camp. An enormously vast space that was devoted to murder. I thought again of what my mother had told me, vague disorganized references to gassings, chimneys, SS, Kappos. Her entire family exterminated . . . sweet nieces and nephews murdered.
My mother's house was one of the homes the Germans occupied in the 1940's. They put phone lines into the walls and set up headquarters for that Carpathian mountain town of Rachov. They posted notes throughout the small town telling its Jewish inhabitants that they were to report to a local public school. They could take whatever they could carry in their hands.
They then left for the Hungarian ghetto Mateszalka, where she remembered a German beating her sister's head. They were then told to line up alphabetically to board trains to Koschow. When some of the local people saw them as the trains went by, they shouted ``You'll never return.'' She still remembers the children's screams for food on the four day train ride. They wanted to throw her off the train and a woman who now lives in New Jersey asked them to ``Let her be, she is a beautiful young woman.'' Today my mother says,
``Half of me doesn't want to remember so that I can remain alive.''
She told me that when they came to Auschwitz, some of the Jews who worked at the trains said in Yiddish ``You are fools to have come here.'' She remembers how they sent her family in different directions; she was sent one way and the rest of the family went the other way. As soon as her mother realized, she sent an older sister for ``Ella.'' ``Find her.'' And when the older sister found Ella she joined her in the line of life and the two of them remained alive. They sheared everyone's hair . . . she remembers the screams when they were sent to a shower that they thought would be gas and there was a ``mistake'' and they remained alive. She remembers the piles of bodies left in their clothes, a Kappo's beating, the heads and the feet in the bunkers. She remembers falling deathly ill from eating soup that had human bones in the bowl.
Auschwitz was not, for my mother, a final destination. She was sent to the Stuttgart vicinity, to the Wehrmacht Fabrik, where they worked as slave laborers at night and slept during the day. When a Nazi asked her what her greatest wish was . .
. she was surprised to answer ``sleeping one night''. He put her into the office to work with other women who knew different languages. Eventually, she was liberated from a sub-camp of Dachau, and took a train back to Prague. In the days following her return, she and hundreds of others would run to the train station whenever a new train pulled in, desperately searching for family, friends, familiar faces. But they were never there. And then she stopped running. For two years or more thereafter, she would go to the basement and cry until she couldn't cry anymore. She met my father in post-war Prague and they soon married. Not long after I was born, they traveled to America, sensing--correctly--that the new Communist rulers would not be kind to the Jews.
I knew all of this--the nightmares, the casual references like ``They all died,'' the guilt in remaining a survivor, the questions. I think again of the soil she wants me to bring back. ``They have no graves,'' she told me. ``It would have been better if the mothers were separated from the children so they didn't have to see them murdered in front of their eyes.'' So, I should have been prepared, no? I should have been ready. Although we never talked in great detail about the camps, I was totally aware. I always knew about my background. I was always so aware of the Holocaust. I bear some of the hidden scars of a survivor's child. And so, why was I so shocked? Why? Why is the walk into Birkeneau so terrifying? Let me take you with me.
First, we crowd together as delegates for the most part, others from the survivors community. I notice a group with a banner that seemed odd. I ask Sigmund and he tells me that this is the banner of ``Mengele's children,'' the survivors of Mengele's experiments--his ``children'' and ``children's children.'' Then Sigmund shows me where Mengele had stood to make his selection. He shows me the women's and men's barracks. We keep walking forward. The ``survivor'' in me stands in awe of what kind of world my parents had lived through.
I have arrived at a different planet. This is not the moon. The moon has been explored. This is a distant planet and those who journeyed there for the entire trip are now dead ashes near the crematoria. The others had to repress, to black out, to forget, in order to go on. This planet is one of surrealistic impressions. The smoke stacks. The endless fields with numbered barracks. The latrine house with round holes for toilets in two rows, each nearly touching the other but with enough space for a sadistic Kappo to walk down the middle and whip the women who took too long to defecate. The bunks with beds . . . eight or nine in each small slab. And we continue to walk.
I feel the people around me, walking down this frightful road. The American Ambassador to Poland had chosen to walk with us for this ``unofficial'' event. The American in me, yearning to believe and hope that the world will stand united against cruelty of this proportion. The Jew in me, fearful of the repetitions of history . . . the Israeli flag . . . a refuge . . . a homeland. . . . The wife of a United States Senator, proud to be part of the American delegation, led by Elie Wiesel, bearing witness to history.
We continue our walk until we arrive at the crematoria. What can I say? I hold Sigmund's arm tightly. What can I say? I came unequipped to the planet of death, of torture, of ``endless nights'' as our delegation leader describes it. Everything in front of me told me you could never believe anything after this place. ``Where was God?'' I remember my father asking.
``Where was God?'' and he, a Rabbi, believed deeply in Him. How could you ever believe again? ``Faith was the cornerstone of our existence,'' he wrote in his memoirs. ``It was inconceivable to us that a merciful father could ignore the pitiful pleas of his children. When we were delivered to the Nazis and the redemption did not occur, we fell into despair; life lost meaning . . . We became an orphan people without a heavenly father.''
All of these people around me walk with us in silence. The program takes place, people speak, people shout. Kaddish is said and we think perhaps it would have been better to keep our silence--just Kaddish and no words. But then we sing Hatikvah and march back to the buses.
Auschwitz is next. A tour of one hour. I find a stone for Dad's grave. I decide not to bring the soil back with me. I had brought a plastic bag, thinking I might. But I decide no. I will not bring soil from the planet of death. Several people tell me about the bones found in the soil 50 years later, some of them the bones of babies. If one is a believer, then the souls have ascended to heaven and what is left should be left behind in peace on Earth. These people, the unsuspecting, the victims, the K'doshim (the holy) were not left behind in peace. I will not take their soil. I don't want any part of that soil.
Yet a rock endures from the beginning. It waits silently, protectively, coldly. The rock was there before, and the rock is there after and the rock bears witness. This egg-shaped rock will go on my father's grave. It is small, Daddy, but it is tough, like you. It survives. And remember, in your memoirs, when you asked ``who should say the mourner's Kaddish?'' Daddy, we said Kaddish as we stood at Birkeneau *
* * our voices, the young, the old, the victims, the onlookers stood together.
Elie Wiesel's friend, Pierre of France goes with me to Auschwitz. A burly large man, somewhat irreverent, quite cynical and sarcastic, takes me to his father's place at Auschwitz. Block 11--the death bunker was the destination of his father who knew 12 languages and served as schreiber
(translator) for the place. He tells me about his father's story. When his Hungarian father was in Auschwitz, a young beautiful woman was brought in. He helped her for the night. Somehow they managed to fall in love and as she left she told him where she was from in Paris and that she would meet him in Paris after the war. When he survived he went to the address. She was there, they met, they married.
Short stories, sweet stories, bitter and unreal. We are shown an enormous room filed with suitcases that are all labeled with the names of the people to whom they once belonged. We see piles of hair. Eyeglasses. Wooden legs. Prayer shawls. It reminds me of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, where similar exhibits exist. I would wonder from time to time why Washington should be the site for such a museum? What is appropriate about the nation's capital? But here in Auschwitz, I see the answer. I understand the importance of keeping evidence of the evil on display, and I also understand that there is a better chance of such a museum remaining open in Washington than in almost any other place in the world. Who knows what will happen here at Auschwitz in years to come? We already know how the Communists kept a lid on the enormity of crimes against the Jews. We do not know what the future will hold, and so it is right for us to have a museum of the Holocaust at the center of the world's oldest, greatest, strongest democracy.
Thursday night, we are taken to a concert at the Slowacki Theater in Krakow, where we hear an orchestral piece written in Poland for the occasion. It is so jagged and jarring--deliberately created so, because it was about the camps--that I want to get out of there. I had gotten through the day but now I need to run. It's so stifling. Finally, it's over, and we think, ``oh God, let's just sit down and have some life.'' So we go to the Ariel Cafe. Let me sit here and be part of life again. Elie Wiesel is here and I recall how often he talks about night, and now we're in the land of night and we have to keep a certain part of ourselves in the night so that we don't lost it. Elie writes from that darkness, yet wants us to hope for the future, for our children. Surrounded by the light and life and sights and sounds of the Ariel Cafe, I want to be lively and have hope, but it is so hard.
Friday, January 27: Auschwitz
On Friday we take buses that go directly to the crematoria area at Auschwitz. I see Vaclav Havel on my bus. When we arrive, there are so many people packed together, walking forward, that it's hard to stand without being pushed. I think to myself, irreverently, that after 50 years, people are still pushing to get to the front of the line! I think, too, that we could have been those people 50 years ago, told to undress and have our hair cut! They were people like us who walked into this camp.
I see all the world's media gathered together, pushing for position, for the best views, wanting to hear every word, and I think, ``where were you 50 years ago when you were truly needed?'' How different things might have been had videotapes been smuggled out and played on television screens around the world!
After a few minutes, the crowd settles in. I stand near Richard Holbrooke and Jan Nowak. The program features representatives from many delegations and religions, including our own delegation leader, Elie Wiesel. I am moved when I hear the ceremony begin--after all--with Kaddish and another Hebrew prayer for the dead, El Maleh. It is a change in the program resulting from a meeting Elie had with Polish President Lech Walesa the day before, as was a reference to Jewish deaths in Walesa's speech.
The formal tribute begins in the growing cold air. A poignant moment occurs when the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of Poland walk around to give the people hot coffee. The elderly, in particular, reach out for cups. Watching these very young children working so charitably 50 years after the Holocaust gives us a warm feeling about the present and the future, even as it conjures up memories of all the other young children, in different kinds of uniforms, who died in the past at this place. There was the story of the little boy who jumped off a train bound for concentration camp with an apple in his hand. The train was at a station, and the SS caught him, took him by his legs and bashed him against the train until he was dead. A few minutes later, one of the murderers was seen casually eating the apple. And there was the story my own father told me of the parents who tossed their babies from the trains into the arms of strangers along the side of the tracks hoping against hope that those families would make a new home for their children.
Tears come to my eyes as I contrast the moments. An international display of solidarity, tribute, apology. Late, painful and yet a moment of hope. Then, it is over, and together we walk to our buses in the mud, past those in prison uniforms, national costumes and mostly, plain street clothes. All shoes and boots are covered with mud.
Friday Night and Saturday, January 27 & 28: Shabbat, Krakow
When I learned before the trip that I had to remain in Poland for Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, alone and far from my family and synagogue, I worried about what I would do. But I am not alone, and, as it turns out, staying in Krakow becomes one of the most special Shabbats I have ever experienced. After the marches, the ceremonies, the journey to the other planet, to stop for Shabbat and to share the special moment with people from all over the world gives meaning to us all. And so we sit together on Friday night with the chief rabbis of England, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, and Jews from England, Germany, Krakow, Warsaw, Israel, America. Rabbi Avi Weiss is with us, the activist who protested the original plans for the ceremony and who has become so much of a celebrity that when the police arrested him
in Poland for tearing down a sign that said ``Protect the cross against Jews and Masons,'' they asked to take his picture and have his autograph!
We all sing and pray together and tell stories. Particularly poignant are the stories of the young Eastern European Jews sitting around the tables. Since the fall of Communism, they are learning of their Jewishness. Their family trees are deeply fractured by the Holocaust; many have no grandparents. Some were born to parents who were hidden with Polish Catholic families when their parents were sent to their death. Another learned just three years ago that he was Jewish. Perhaps some of them are descended from the babies tossed from the death trains. How ironic that Hitler's criteria for determining who was Jewish--in some instances, quite remote--is the same relationship many of these children have to Judaism.
The next day, on our way to services, I walk behind Rabbi Weiss and see him with his prayer shawl over his jacket. People along the way, not accustomed to seeing Jews, stop and stare. Some take pictures. And I think, ``is it gaudy, is it showy, is it obnoxious for our group to be so obvious in such a place?'' That is my first reaction, but then I remember Auschwitz and the hanging prayer shawls taken from the Jews who were annihilated, and now the descendants are alive and walking to the synagogue, and it seems right.
Our Shabbot services in the hotel are, strangely enough, joyous. We are all happy to be together, to be alive. We feel the history of the tragedy in our depths. We share our common history, common pain. We all have questions and no real answers. As we call out in our prayers, rising above and beyond the evil planet of Auschwitz and Birkeneau, the planet that bears witness to our people's destruction, we all turn to the very God that has not answered the prayers of our parents and their parents as the crematoria burnt their bodies into ashes.
Nothing on that planet gives you faith, hope or answers. Nothing there gives you hope for mankind. And yet, as I walked with my fellow travellers that day, as I felt their bodies near me, heard their feet in the mud and stone, walking silently, I knew our walk was a prayer. Our walk might defy--bear witness. Our walk might challenge any evils as great as powerful as wicked, and so, on Friday night, we all felt history around us. We were defying Hitler and his henchmen. I thought back to 1988, when I joined my husband on his first visit to the historic chamber of the Senate, where the historian lectured us about the famous figures in American history who had occupied these seats. I looked at Joe and asked him what he was thinking and he talked about how proud and honored he was to be part of this rich history. ``What about you? What are you thinking?'' he asked. ``About Hitler,'' I replied.
``About how he tried to annihilate all the Jews, and here I am on the floor of the Senate, the wife of a Senator. I am thinking about throwing my fist up in the air in defiance of Hitler.''
That is the feeling I had again, more powerfully than ever before, at Birkeneau and Auschwitz. We were rising above the defiled and tortured and abandoned. We were free Jews singing to God, responsible for one another.
Am yisrael chai. The people of Israel live. The Israeli flag was around us and we knew how great our need for a place of refuge; wanting to trust, yet learning the bitter lessons of history. We Americans know how special our country is, a country where a Jew could become a Senator, and where his wife, a survivor, can be chosen by the President to participate in a commemoration of the liberation--the destruction--of the planet of death.
I had to go there. No matter how much you read, and how much you hear about it, and how much you talk to your family and parents--even if you are as close to the Holocaust as the child of survivors--you have to go there and see this horrendously evil, evil, evil place that stinks in its profanity, that is so ugly it shakes your belief in everything, your belief in mankind, your faith in God. You will not understand. But you will know.
Now, home with my family, I look forward to the day when I will travel to my father's grave in New Jersey and place the stone from Auschwitz on the ground that contains his earthly remains, confident that this spirit survives in eternity, never again to live on a planet of death. Never again.
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