February 6, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 25 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session

[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E144-E145]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   REMARKS AT THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ BY 
                         SURVIVOR MARIAN TURSKI

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. STENY H. HOYER

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, February 6, 2020

  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, on January 27, world leaders gathered at 
the site of Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi death camp, where 1.1 million 
innocent people--960,000 of them Jews--were systematically murdered 
during the Second World War. They joined survivors to mark the seventy-
fifth anniversary of the camp's liberation by Allied forces on January 
27, 1945. Among the survivors who spoke at that commemoration was 
Marian Turski, a Polish-Jewish journalist and historian who has been a 
global advocate for Holocaust remembrance and human rights--and who 
marched in 1965 with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from Selma to 
Montgomery.
  His powerful words stirred the souls of those gathered on that solemn 
day. I have read them, and I want to share them with my colleagues so 
that they too will be moved. All Americans ought to read his account 
and his warning to future generations that we must heed the lessons of 
the Holocaust and the rise of the Nazi movement that brought it about. 
Therefore, I include in the Record his remarks.

         Remarks by Marian Turski, Auschwitz, January 27, 2020

       Dear friends, I am one of the few still alive of those who 
     remained in this place almost to the very last moment before 
     liberation. My so-called evacuation from Auschwitz commenced 
     on the 18th of January. Over the next six and a half days it 
     proved a death march for more than half of my fellow inmates, 
     with whom I marched in a column of six hundred. In all 
     likelihood, I will not make it to the next commemoration. 
     Such are the laws of nature.
       Please therefore forgive me the emotion in what I will now 
     say. This is what I want to say above all to my daughter, my 
     granddaughter, who I thank for being present here, to my 
     grandson: it concerns those who are the peers of my daughter, 
     of my grandchildren; a new generation, particularly the 
     youngest, those who are younger even than them.
       When the Second World War broke out, I was a teenager. My 
     father was a soldier who had received a serious gunshot wound 
     to the lung. It was a dramatic situation for our family. My 
     mother came from the Polish-Lithuanian-Belarusian border, 
     where armies had swept back and forth, plundering, looting, 
     raping, burning villages so as to leave nothing for those who 
     came after them. You might say I knew first-hand from my 
     father and mother what war is. Yet despite everything, 
     although only 20 or 25 years had passed, it seemed as distant 
     as the Polish uprisings of the 19th century; as distant as 
     the French Revolution.
       When I meet young people today, I realize that after 75 
     years they seem a little weary of this topic: war, the 
     Holocaust, genocide. I understand them. That is why I promise 
     you, young people, that I will not tell you about my 
     suffering. I will not tell you about my experiences, my two 
     death marches, how I ended the war weighing 32kg, exhausted, 
     on the verge of death. I will not talk about the worst of it, 
     that is, the tragedy of parting with loved ones after the 
     selection, when you sensed what awaited them. No, I won't 
     talk about these things. I would like to talk to you about my 
     daughter's generation, and my grandchildren's generation.
       I see that President of Austria Alexander Van der Bellen is 
     among us. You will remember, Mr. President, when you hosted 
     me and the leaders of the International Auschwitz Committee 
     and we talked about those times. At one point you used the 
     phrase: `Auschwitz isl nicht vom Himmel gefallen.' Auschwitz 
     did not descend from the sky. This is, to use a phrase of 
     ours, an obvious obviousness.
       Of course it didn't descend from the sky. Yet while this 
     may seem a banal enough statement, it contains a profound and 
     extremely important cognitive shortcut. Let us shift our 
     imagination for a moment to Berlin in the early 1930s. We are 
     almost in the city center, in a district called Bayerisches 
     Viertel, the Bavarian Quarter. Three stops from Ku'damm; from 
     the zoo. Where the Bayerischer Platz metro is today. And 
     here, one day in the early 1930s, a sign appears on the 
     benches: `Jews may not sit here.' `Okay,' you might think, 
     `this is unpleasant, it's unfair, it's not nice, but after 
     all there are so many benches around here, you can sit 
     somewhere else, it's fine.'
       This was a district inhabited by German intelligentsia of 
     Jewish origin. Albert Einstein, Nobel laureate Nelly Sachs, 
     the industrialist, politician and Foreign Minister Walter 
     Altenau lived there. One day a sign appears at the swimming 
     pool. `Jews are forbidden to enter this swimming pool.' 
     `Okay,' you might say, `this is unpleasant, but Berlin has so 
     many places to swim, so many lakes, canals--it's practically 
     Venice--so you can go and swim somewhere else.'
       Then another sign appears. `Jews are not allowed to belong 
     to German choral associations.' So what? They want to sing 
     and make music? Let them gather together and sing by 
     themselves. Then another sign. `Jewish, non-Aryan children 
     are not allowed to play with German, Aryan children.' So 
     they can play by themselves. And another. `We sell bread 
     and other food products to Jews only after 5pm.' Okay, now 
     this is a real hindrance because there's less choice, but 
     in the end you can still shop after 5pm.
       And here we start to get used to the idea that you can 
     exclude someone. That you can stigmatize someone. That you 
     can turn someone into an alien. Slowly, gradually, day by 
     day, people begin to get used to it--victims, perpetrators, 
     witnesses, those we call bystanders--all begin to get used to 
     the idea that a minority that gave the world Einstein, Nelly 
     Sachs, Heinrich Heine and the Mendelssohns is different, that 
     these people can be pushed to the edges of society, that they 
     are strangers, that they spread germs and start epidemics. 
     These terrible, dangerous thoughts are the beginning of what 
     happens next.
       The regime of the time plays things cleverly, meeting the 
     demands of workers. The first of May wasn't celebrated in 
     Germany

[[Page E145]]

     before? Never mind, here you go. On leisure days, they 
     introduce Kraft durch Freude--Strength Through Joy. Organized 
     holidays for the workers. They vanquish unemployment and play 
     on the strings of national dignity: `Germany, rise from the 
     shame of Versailles. Restore your pride.' At the same time, 
     the regime sees that the people are gradually overwhelmed by 
     the anesthesia of indifference. They stop reacting to evil. 
     And so, the regime can afford to accelerate the process of 
     evil.
       From there, things accelerate. A ban on employing Jews. A 
     ban on emigration. Then the evil spreads to the ghettos: to 
     Riga; to Kaunas; to my ghetto, the todz ghetto--
     Litzmannstadt. Most of those there are sent to Kulmhof--
     Chetmno--where they will be murdered in gas vans, and the 
     rest are sent to Auschwitz, where they will be murdered with 
     Zyklon B in modern gas chambers. And here we see the truth of 
     what President Van der Bellen said: `Auschwitz didn't 
     suddenly descend from the sky.' Auschwitz crept up, pattered 
     with small steps, came closer and closer, until the things 
     that happened here began.
       My daughter, my granddaughter, peers of my daughter, peers 
     of my granddaughter--perhaps you do not know the name of 
     Primo Levi. Primo Levi was one of the most well-known 
     prisoners of this camp. He once coined the phrase: `It 
     happened, therefore it can happen, it can happen everywhere.'
       I will share with you one personal memory. In 1965, I was 
     in the United States of America on a scholarship during the 
     fight for human rights, for civil rights, for rights for 
     African Americans. I had the honor of taking part in the 
     march from Selma to Montgomery with Martin Luther King. When 
     my fellow marchers found that I had been in Auschwitz, they 
     asked me `Do you think that such a thing could only happen in 
     Germany? Or could it happen elsewhere?' I told them: `It 
     could happen to you. If civil rights are violated, if 
     minority rights are not respected and are abolished. If the 
     law is violated, as happened in Selma, then such things could 
     happen.' What to do? You must do what you can. If you can 
     defend the constitution, defend your rights, defend your 
     democratic order, defend the rights of minorities --then you 
     can overcome this.
       Most of us Europeans come from the Judeo-Christian 
     tradition. Believers and non-believers alike accept the Ten 
     Commandments as the canon of our civilization. A friend of 
     mine, Roman Kent, the president of the International 
     Auschwitz Committee, who spoke here five years ago during the 
     previous commemoration, could not be here today. He coined 
     the `Eleventh Commandment,' which stems from the experience 
     of the Shoah, the Holocaust, the terrible epoch of contempt. 
     It runs thus: `Thou shalt not be indifferent.'
       And this is what I want to tell my daughter, what I want to 
     tell my grandchildren. My daughter's peers, my 
     grandchildren's peers, wherever they might live, in Poland, 
     Israel, America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe. This is very 
     important. Thou shalt not be indifferent in the face of lies 
     about history. Thou shalt not be indifferent when the past is 
     distorted for today's political needs. Thou shalt not be 
     indifferent when any minority faces discrimination. Majority 
     rule is the essence of democracy, but democracy also means 
     that minority rights must be protected. Thou shalt not be 
     indifferent when any authority violates the existing social 
     contract. Be faithful to this commandment. To the Eleventh 
     Commandment: thou shalt not be indifferent.
       Because if you are indifferent, you will not even notice it 
     when upon your own heads, and upon the heads of your 
     descendants, another Auschwitz descends from the sky.

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