 The President of the United States. Well, ladies and gentlemen, please be seated. Good afternoon and welcome to the White House. And I just said outside before I really make the remarks that I have intended to make. It might be appropriate to mention I received yesterday an Easter greeting. Small, obviously handmade, and artistically done. And particularly when you consider that it probably had to be done in secret and then smuggled out of where it was done. It was from internees in one of the prison camps in Poland today. And it contained a message of thanks to us for what we're trying to do in their behalf. And I thought it was a pretty good reminder at this particular season that the things that bring us together here are still possible in the world. I understand many of you have just arrived in here from the Rotunda. Our gatherings today at the Rotunda here in the White House and in meetings across the land reflect the magnitude of what has brought us together. Thirty-seven years ago, as the conflagration in Europe drew to a close, our eyes were open to a new tragedy of such proportion that even now we can't grasp the horror of it. There were millions of victims of the Holocaust. Such vast figures have a way of blinding us to the humanity behind the numbers. Today perhaps for a moment we should think of those who are not with us. We miss these people, though we were never permitted to know them. God understands how different, I'm sure, and only God our lives would be had they been permitted to live. There was Isaac Rudashevsky, a young Lithuanian, trapped in a ghetto at 15 years of age. Instead of giving up hope, he concentrated on reading and learning. His diary described his appetite for books. The book unites us with the future, he wrote. The book unites us with the world. Isaac did not survive, and one can only speculate what he might have become, an author possibly, and the world might have been drawn a little closer because of his contributions. Charlotte Sullivan, a talented painter. She left a selection of artwork, but her life was cut short. We can only wonder what she might have created for us. Marisha Eisenstadt was the daughter of a director of the Warsaw synagogue. We're told her voice was so beautiful that she was called the Nightingale of the Ghetto. She was killed during the liquidations, and we'll never know the comfort of her song. Hannah Sinish, originally from Hungary, made it safely to Israel. And she courageously parachuted back into Hungary in hopes of saving others. And instead, she herself was a victim. She left behind some of her poetry, but not nearly enough. And then there was Moses Flinker, a 16-year-old Dutch boy. This diary tells us that while he was in hiding, he decided he would become a statesman in Israel when the war was over. He wrote that after making the decision to go into politics, he decided to study Arabic. Why? Well, he knew that Israel would have to live in peace with its neighbors, and he wanted to possess the skills necessary to help in that task. In a few days, Israel will return the final portion of the Sinai. We could only wonder what kind of contribution Moses Flinker would make if he were here with us. We fervently pray that the return of the Sinai will be accepted for what it is, a magnificent act of faith by Israel for the sake of peace. It's a noble expression by a people who've suffered so much. The United States is grateful for this step which reinforces our firm commitment to Israel's security. Today we're reminded that we must be sensitive to the history of a people whose country was reborn from the ashes of the Holocaust, a country that rightfully never takes its security or its survival for granted. With this in mind, all peace-loving people should applaud Israel and Egypt for what they have done. Those who died cannot be with us, but they have a contribution to make. Their voices from the past cry out for us never to tolerate hatred or bigotry. Their voices can be heard even now. Those who survived also remind us of heroism and dignity in the face of adversity, of truths discovered in the midst of pain and suffering. Viktor Frankl, a prisoner of Auschwitz, later became a well-known professor of psychiatry and an author. He discussed some of his observations in his book, Man's Search for Meaning. We who lived in concentration camps, he wrote, can remember the men who walked through the house 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. We of today must choose how we will respond to the Holocaust. Let us tell the world that we will struggle against the darker side of human nature, that with God's help, goodness will prevail, and those who lost their lives will not be forgotten. If you will permit me, I'd like to mention one last victim of the Holocaust. He is a victim, yet he may also be a survivor. During the dark years when the world began to realize what was happening, there arose among us heroes who risked their lives trying to save people, often total strangers from the camps. In Assisi, Italy, for example, almost the entire population risked their lives hiding Jews throughout the town. Some years ago, when I was in Denmark to celebrate the Raybill Society's 4th of July celebration, the largest celebration of the 4th of July, our American holiday outside the United States, and I learned there how in the Nazi occupation of Denmark, when the order came out for the Danes to turn in their Jewish neighbors, the next day every Dane appeared on the street wearing a Star of David. But the one man who I think must be remembered above all was Raoul Wallenberg. One such man at incredible risk saved tens of thousands, and on this day of remembrance, let us especially recall this man. And if he's alive, as some suggest, let his captors know they'll be forgotten long before Raoul Wallenberg is forgotten. Let us also bear in mind on this special day that the entire human family now faces the threat of a different kind of holocaust, a nuclear holocaust. May the remembrance of past victims of man's inhumanity to man strengthen our resolve to seek a just and peaceful world for ourselves and our posterity. And again, thank you all for being here today. We are profoundly moved by your presence and by your statement, Mr. President. We have not forgotten nor shall we forget your words from last year. As you know, the ceremony itself is simple, sober, and penetrated with prayer. It defies communication. There are simply no words to describe what happened, Mr. President. People could not understand them, and they would not understand now. How could human beings inflict so much pain and fear and death upon other human beings? At what point did the killer set into motion his own dehumanizing process? What happened to the killer as a person when he tortured old sages, old Talmudic scholars and their mutilated young disciples? We remember the victims with incommensurate sadness and the killers with infinite fear. The war has been over for 37 years, Mr. President, but we are still fighting the enemy. You spoke up last year so movingly to condemn those who denied that 6 million Jews had indeed been killed in the death camps. But, Mr. President, they didn't hear you, nor do they hear us. They continue their vicious, ugly, morally demented propaganda. In our country, their work is being done by right-wing fascists, but in Europe, in France, it is being done by extreme left-wing intellectuals. They all join in this insane need that they feel to deny that whatever we went through didn't happen. But, Mr. President, what does it all mean? What do they say that I am a liar, that we invent our own suffering? What do they want us to do to come out and show our wounds? We don't like it, Mr. President. We don't like to cry. We don't like to weep. We don't like to speak of our agony because our work is not an exercise in morbidity, Mr. President. We are trying to teach something. We are trying to teach the vulnerability of culture when it is not imbued with morality. The killers have been intellectuals. We are trying to teach the world that whatever is being done to one people, to the Jewish people, actually affected humanity and, as you said, the dangers in the future are planetary. They are so huge. They are fearsome. How can we save the world, Mr. President, if not with our tail? And we have to do it for the sake of our children, Mr. President, for the Jew who went through the war. To bring a child into this world was a very great act of faith. For we had all the reasons in the world to give up, to give up on man, on humankind, to give up on civilization, to give up on everything. And as in the Talmudic times, to stop at least an attempt was made once to stop. But we didn't, Mr. President. We decided to wager on man and God. And therefore you see those of us who went through the war, they are the most generous, the most compassionate people you can imagine. They are always on the front fighting against every injustice for every cause. They are always there to fight for humanity when humanity is in danger. Of course we are concerned, Mr. President, but you spoke about Israel. It touched us very deeply because we are concerned about Israel. And we are concerned about those who are in jail in Poland and those who are in the camps in Russia and the Jews in Ethiopia and all the dissidents and all the victims. We are terribly concerned and we would like to help. And that is why we are teaching and there is an urgency, Mr. President, on the council which works under your authority. There are many men and women from all walks of life, Christians and Jews, scholars and rabbis and men in industry and men of letters. We are working recently with a profound sense of urgency. Time is running out. It reminds me of the ghettos when everybody was writing. Everybody was becoming a historian writing, writing for the future. Now too we are teaching more. We are challenging more. We are exploring more that period because we believe it's late. It's very late. One chronicler named Chaim Kaplan, a religious Jew in Warsaw, wrote, If my life ends, what will happen with my diary? His life ended. His diary remained. But if our teaching ends and if we forget, Mr. President, what will happen to our lives and what will happen to humanity? Humanity will perish in shame and in guilt for having permitted such a unique event in history to be forgotten. But again, we do believe that it is possible to remember, it is possible to pray, it is possible to study and it is possible to live for men and with men. And the proof are our children. And therefore, Mr. President, today the six candles that symbolize six million Jewish men, women and their children all of them who we inhabited a world of purity and grace and were simply slaughtered almost in broad daylight in burning pits and in flames, in gas chambers. There wasn't a method that wasn't used to kill those six million Jews. The lightsick candles, and today they will be lit by our children and their parents. The first is a young boy named Elisha. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our program. Would you remain in your seats please as the President leaves the room.