FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
International Holocaust Remembrance Day Event
Remarks
Michael G. Kozak
Acting Special Envoy to Monitor and
Combat Anti-Semitism
Washington, DC
January 28, 2013
Thank you for joining us this afternoon in the Dean Acheson auditorium to
mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On behalf of the Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, welcome to today’s commemoration. Today we
honor the millions of victims of the Holocaust and learn more about the
‘Holocaust by Bullets’ that took place in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union during World War II.
When many of us reflect on the Holocaust, the horrific gas chambers and ovens
of the death camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka immediately come to mind. Yet in
parts of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, there was a less known part
of the terrible genocide perpetrated against Jews, Roma, and other victims of
the Nazis and their allies between 1941 and 1945. To the East of the line drawn
by Hitler and Stalin in 1939 dividing Europe and starting WWII, the Nazis
committed a low tech but equally murderous genocide. During this period, death
squads of German soldiers or local collaborators dug pits, marched their victims
to them, and machine gunned the men, women and children whose only crime was
being born Jewish or otherwise considered “inferior” by the murderous Nazi
regime. Millions of men, women and children died this way, their remains covered
over in unmarked mass graves. Virtually no one escaped. In the death camps in
the West, some victims were kept alive temporarily to serve as slave labor or to
help “administer” the death camps until their turn came. In the East, you were
picked up and killed within hours.
During my time as the U.S. Ambassador to Belarus, I saw just how the legacy
of this abomination still affects the entire population. It is part of the
everyday experience of people living there. You do not need to go to a death
camp to be confronted with the evidence of mass murder. You drive or walk past a
depression in the earth and someone will say, “Oh, that is where they killed my
grandparents.” I drove past a mass grave on my way to work each morning (albeit
one containing victims of the NKVD). My wife taught aerobics in a gymnasium, the
courtyard of which was a mass grave containing thousands. My USAID coordinator
found where her grandparents were presumably killed; the depression in the earth
made a convenient place for a garbage dump. Minsk and other cities in Belarus
before the war had large Jewish populations, in some cases Jews comprised the
majority. Street signs were in Yiddish as well as Russian. After the war all but
a handful of the Belarusian Jews were dead. The story was similar in the Baltics
and Ukraine and in parts of the Russian Federation.
This ‘Holocaust by Bullets’ was the subject of a documentary produced by
Yahad-In Unum, an organization whose goal is to systematically identify and
document every mass execution site during the Second World War.
We are honored to have with us today as a panelist Father Patrick Desbois,
one of the founders and the current President of Yahad-In Unum. Yahad-In Unum
means ‘unity’ in Hebrew and Latin, and the mission of Father Desbois and his
colleagues is to truly bring unity out of the discord of the past carefully and
deliberately created by the Nazi State. To quote Father Desbois, Yahad-In Unum’s
“objectives are to substantiate this ‘Holocaust by Bullets’, to irrevocably
refute the Holocaust deniers of today and tomorrow, to serve as a permanent
warning to humanity of the dangers of genocide and to allow for the respectful
remembrance of the fallen.”
In this spirit of remembrance of the past and action in the future, I am very
pleased that Dr. Suzanne Brown-Fleming, Director of Visiting Scholar Programs at
the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, is among today’s panelists. One of
the great tragedies of the Holocaust is that the message ‘Never Again!’ was
unfortunately not heeded in many parts of the world in the latter half of the
20th century and the beginning of this century. Through the work of
Dr. Brown-Fleming and her colleagues at the Holocaust Museum here in Washington,
the Museum is marking its 20th anniversary this year with the theme
of ‘Never Again – What You Do Matters’. This anniversary theme, “asks America to
renew its pledge to honor Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans and
challenges today’s generations to act on the lessons of the Holocaust and
fulfill the promise of “Never Again.” ”
President Obama has taken up that challenge. Soon after entering office, he
signed Presidential Study Directive 10 making the prevention of atrocities a key
focus of this Administration’s foreign policy, both a core national security
interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States. Our other
panelist, my friend Victoria Holt, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of
International Organization Affairs, is especially qualified to address current
efforts to ensure that mass murder such as occurred during the Holocaust is
never repeated. Tori was an expert leader for the Genocide Prevention Task Force
-- led by former Secretaries Albright and Cohen -- that recommended the creation
of an Atrocities Prevention Board, which the President created in 2011.
Unfortunately, one of our scheduled panelists, Julia Fromholz, Special Assistant
to Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights
Maria Otero, is unwell and unable to be with us this afternoon. Julia in her
life in the NGO world developed the key training module we and other agencies
use in this field, and now serves as the coordinator within the State Department
of our efforts to use the Atrocity Prevention Board to make a difference.
Our moderator today will be my esteemed colleague, U.S. Special Envoy for
Holocaust Issues, Douglas Davidson. The Department of State office that he leads
seeks to bring a measure of justice and assistance to Holocaust victims and
their families and to create an infrastructure to assure that the Holocaust is
remembered properly and accurately. This is an important issue in our bilateral
relations with European countries and with the State of Israel. Much of the
office's work relates to bringing closure to issues left outstanding during the
Cold War.
In a few moments, we will watch the brief documentary by Yahad-In Unum,
called ‘Holocaust by Bullets’, which I mentioned previously. It will be followed
by several taped testimonials from actual eye witnesses from the former Soviet
Union. Afterwards, we will have an opportunity to hear from Father Desbois and
the other panelists about their work and engage in an open discussion with
members of the audience.
Remembering the Holocaust and pledging to prevent future genocide is not an
issue unique to any one country or society. It is a matter of global importance.
On January 14, the Greek government joined several European countries by
creating a Special Envoy position for Holocaust Issues. Last Thursday, the
Senate of Belgium ratified a resolution acknowledging the role of the Belgian
government officials during the Holocaust. Many countries have difficulty coming
to terms with their roles in history. Belgium’s lawmakers acted courageously in
ratifying this resolution. The Belgian government, which currently chairs the
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, has acted with leadership and
commitment in confronting its past. If a country cannot bring itself to
recognize where it fell short in combating or actively collaborated with the
Nazi genocide over a half century ago, how can we expect them to deal honestly
with contemporary atrocities in the making? The object here is not to condemn
our ancestors who fell short or fell guilty about them, but to ensure that we
recognize what they did and perhaps how they were brought to do it so that we
can try to inoculate ourselves and others from falling victim to the same
demons. I am pleased that present today are diplomats from the embassies of
Austria, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden,
Ukraine, and the United Kingdom, including Ambassador Marina Kaljurand from the
Estonian Embassy, Ambassador Andris Razans from the Latvian Embassy, and
Ambassador Zygimantas Pavilionis from the Lithuanian Embassy.
They are joined by representatives from non-governmental organizations,
academia, think tanks, and the media, among others. Together, we are all
witnesses to the past. And together, we are all future activists.
Please join me in welcoming all of our distinguished guests, panelists and
moderator. Thank you.
