Remarks
by the Honorable Warren L. Miller, Chairman
United States Commission for
the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
March 13, 2002, Washington, D.C.
[To
Fred Zeidman] Thank you for that generous introduction, and congratulations
on your appointment. The President made an outstanding choice to lead
an outstanding institution. Members of the Diplomatic Corp, Members of
Congress, survivors and liberators, honored guests.
At Buchenwald there was terror and mass murder in 1945. In New York, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon there was terror and mass murder in 2001. Evil was with us then – and evil is with us now. Can there be any doubt of the relevance and the importance that the cause of memory has to mankind – today and in the future?
The building of the Little Camp Memorial required patience, compromise and cooperation by many.
This 5 year old child was the enemy of the National Socialist Party and the German State. He was a prisoner at Buchenwald when it was liberated. There were hundreds of these dreaded enemies of the state still alive in the Little Camp at liberation. Why did they want to destroy the children? Was a five-year old child a danger to the Nazi Party?
This child was inmate number 87900. Inmate number 87900 is here tonight. He is Stephen Jacobs, the architect of the memorial.
Steve donated his time, creativity and energy to this project. There were many trips to Buchenwald – time away from families and business. During one trip, Steve confided to me that creation of the memorial was one of the hardest things he ever did. Steve, I have no doubt of that. Thank you from the bottom of my heart – you did a superb job. {Steve, please stand}
I also give profound thanks to Dr. Volkhard Knigge of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorial Foundation who continually encouraged this effort, and actively participated in its planning, often while engaged in the most grueling administrative and political controversies. The politics of memory in the former East Germany in the years following reunification have been so intense that Dr. Knigge received death threats and needed police protection. Despite the pressure, he consistently demonstrated wisdom and courage in making sure history is accurately represented.
I also give special thanks to the donors for their generosity. Most of you gave money; some of you gave time. Many of you gave both. I cannot thank you enough. There are too many names to mention, however, you will see them listed on an easel as you leave this room.
There is one donor I must mention, however, Jerry Klinger, who encouraged this project from the start, both financially and morally, and who put me in touch with another benefactor and with Steve Jacobs.
I would also like to thank President Bush for giving me the opportunity to serve as Chairman of the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, and for his heartfelt interest in the cause of Holocaust Remembrance. In his first one hundred days in office he not only visited this Museum but also spoke at the National Days of Remembrance ceremony. It was obvious to anyone who heard him speak how deeply he feels about the Holocaust and the importance of memory. It is also reflected in his thoughtful letter, which appears in tonight’s program.
Additionally, I want
to thank my fellow members of the Commission for your dedication and noble
work. The Commission works to preserve cultural sites important to Americans
in Central and Eastern Europe, including sites devastated by the Holocaust
and fifty years of Communist neglect, often where there is no one left
to protect those sacred places.
Thanks also go to our Commission staff for their hard work and support,
and to Congressman Ben Gilman for his unwavering support of our efforts.
I also must thank Senators Kit Bond, Trent Lott and John Warner for actively
supporting my work at the Commission and in particular Senator Bond for
being so sensitive to the importance of the Little Camp project. Thanks
too, to Ben Mead of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors,
and Michael Berenbaum, for their support, and to Chairman Fred Zeidman,
Sara Bloomfield and the Museum staff for all their hard work in hosting
this event and helping to make it a meaningful and memorable one.
I would be remiss if I did not also thank Ed Ingle, Deputy Cabinet Secretary, Rebecca Contreras, Special Assistant to the President, and Karen Yeager, Kirstie Tucker, and Misty Marshall of the White House Staff, all of whom have been so helpful with tonight’s program.
Last, but not least, I must thank my wife and children for putting up with the sacrifices necessitated by my pursuing a dream.
The Little Camp Memorial was created to ensure remembrance. But completing it should not in any way allow us as individuals to put the suffering endured by the victims of the Little Camp behind us, nor diminish our continuing outrage at the regime that created and encouraged this extraordinarily evil place. At liberation, when American soldiers entered the Little Camp, the conditions that they encountered cannot be comprehended and anyone who entered that place would never again be the same. Combat veterans doubled over, many vomited, others sobbed uncontrollably. They saw heaps of dead bodies, brutalized human beings who lay about in their own excrement, men and boys who were emaciated skeletons with hollow-eyed faces, many in various stages of insanity. Some could not even grasp that they had been liberated.
Suffering in the biting wind on the north side of a mountain, life for those at Buchenwald was always barbaric, and often fatal. Humiliation and atrocities were an everyday occurrence – reflecting the SS policy that inmates were enemies of the Third Reich and were to be terrorized both emotionally and physically so that their wills would be broken and their physical strength destroyed. The Little Camp, 90% or more of whose inmates were Jews, was the most hellish place in the hell that was Buchenwald.
Inmates slept in horse stables on wooden planks; up to six men would fit into a compartment less than five feet wide and two feet high. Many suffered from dysentery; they used their food bowl – the only possession in the world they had left – as a pillow and sometimes as a night latrine. There was little food and water. One latrine existed for 20,000 inmates. The stables had virtually no heat, dirt floors, no lights and no windows. Sadistic guards beat prisoners for no reason. Conditions were so deplorable, and the stench so vile, that many American soldiers and fellow prisoners from the main camp could not bring themselves to go into the Little Camp at the time of liberation.
This memorial was created for the few who survived and the thousands who did not. These are the people we are here to recognize and honor this evening.
In the 1950s when the East German government made Buchenwald into a massive shrine to “anti-fascism,” the memory of the Little Camp, like so many other details of the Holocaust, was suppressed under the rhetoric of Communist propaganda. The fact that so many of the victims were Jews was not relevant to their agenda. The Communists preserved the main campsite, but the Little Camp was physically ignored in terms of preservation efforts and remembrance. The reunification of Germany and the creation of a new Foundation formed in 1994 by the federal government of Germany and the Free State of Thuringia to operate the site at Buchenwald, provided the opportunity to change things.
When I first visited Buchenwald that year, I asked to see the Little Camp. There were no markers, just trees and brush. I thought to myself; “the world will never know what happened here.” I decided something needed to be done.
Shortly afterwards, I met Dr. Knigge and suggested to him the need for a memorial. I had not been with him more than five or ten minutes, when he asked if I was a survivor, ----- I said no. He then asked, “Why do you do this?” I answered him simply, --------“Because it’s important.”
When I returned home, I called Elie Wiesel, and asked his opinion. Elie had serious doubts whether it could be done, he didn’t know where I would get the money or if german authorities would approve it. But he quickly endorsed the idea. In 1995, the Board of the Buchenwald Foundation approved my proposal.
I had advised the Board I had one non-negotiable condition – the memorial had to prominently display a narrative that I would write of what had occurred in the Little Camp. I did not want a stone edifice or abstract sculpture that required imagination or interpretation. I wanted people who come to Buchenwald – which is 700,000 visitors per year—to learn what happened in the Little Camp, and be impacted by it. The Board agreed, and made an exception to its stated policy of having no new monuments at Buchenwald.
And thus began a seven-year odyssey that brings us here tonight. Getting to this point has not been easy.
I announced the memorial as a Commission project during ceremonies at Buchenwald commemorating the 50th anniversary of its’ liberation in April 1995. Optimistic, I began raising money for the project.
But progress was
affected by the financial limitations of the Buchenwald Foundation. In
the beginning, this was intended to be a joint project -- with costs shared
equally. Later, I was advised that the Foundation lacked any funds for
the memorial, and that we would have to pay for the memorial in its entirety.
In the end, the foundation made a very significant contribution. The funding
for the project provided by our Commission was raised entirely from the
American private sector – no U.S. Government funds were used.
But raising money was only one of many challenges presented by this project.
In early 1996, after archeological work was underway and nearly a year into the project, I was informed for the first time that all plans had to be approved not just by Dr. Knigge and the Board, but also by a Curatorial Council of fifteen German historians.
I was concerned that the project could be put on hold by an inability to make decisions, or even stopped. At the time, there was controversy in Germany over the nature of a National Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. I also recognized that it is very difficult for a nation of former perpetrators to determine how to honor its victims. Despite support for Holocaust commemoration throughout Germany, projects seemed to languish. And as it happened, the Council did not even consider our project for eighteen months.
During this time Steve Jacobs and I went to Buchenwald, met with officials, and negotiated the memorial’s size, location, and important features. A 31-inch height restriction, which would have prevented an effective memorial, was modified at our request.
But in April 1997, two years into the project, I received a call from Dr. Knigge advising me that despite all the work done, and approvals given, a proposal had been advanced to have architectural competition for the design of the memorial. I was stunned and angry, and let my counterparts in Germany know it. Fortunately, with Dr. Knigge’s help, this proposal was dropped. We returned to Buchenwald and finally met with the Curatorial Council, but they still made no decisions. It became obvious that our project was a lesser priority than the controversial creation of a separate museum for the post-War --- Soviet Camp at Buchenwald, that existed between 1945 and 1950. The Curatorial Council would not act on the plans for the Little Camp until the Soviet camp museum opened.
After it did, I went back to Buchenwald, and again appeared before the Curatorial Council to argue the merits of the memorial. For the first time preliminary approval was given, but the Council requested substantial revisions to the plans. After a wait of eight more months, during which time our proposal received approval from all of the various advisory boards of former prisoners, the Council finally gave approval in June 1998. Only then was authorization given to seek necessary permits, a process that pushed the project into 1999.
But, in 1999 the city of Weimar, located four miles from Buchenwald, was the Cultural Capital of Europe in recognition of its’ one thousand year anniversary. No construction was permitted that year when one million people visited Buchenwald. An excellent opportunity to bring attention to the Little Camp if the memorial had been completed, turned out to be another delay for the project.
In early 2000, construction bids came in much higher than expected and the project needed substantial additional funds. The Buchenwald Foundation had not yet made a commitment to help fund the memorial, and frustrations were high. Dr. Knigge suggested we might have to downsize the memorial. My predecessor as Commission Chairman voiced his concern that money donated for this project had been unused for several years and our unfulfilled commitment to donors could jeopardize the Commission’s reputation. I agreed and advised him if necessary I would make it a personal project and clear the books by year end. Things would have to happen – and they did.
The Foundation informed me that they would make available some money on the condition that our Commission provide the bulk of the funding. Fundraising efforts were intensified, the needed funds were raised and a contract was signed.
Construction began in May 2001 and the memorial was completed in time for the formal dedication scheduled for last October in Germany. However, the attack on our country caused it as well as tonight’s program to be postponed – the dedication will now take place on April 14th in Buchenwald, at which more than 70 survivors and 25 liberators have informed Buchenwald officials they will attend.
After all the complexity of getting the memorial erected – it seems a remarkably simple place. But it’s a subtle creation that provides a refuge for serious contemplation.
The memorial is built of stone from the mountain on which Buchenwald is located, close to the quarry where breaking and carrying stone was the center of daily activity for many inmates of the Little Camp, sometimes for fourteen hours a day, seven days a week.
The entrance ramp
ends with a ninety-degree turn into a closed space, which forces the visitor
to experience a moment of arrival and a sense of confinement. Once inside,
it is a stark space. The floor in the center of the memorial is cobblestone,
recalling the streets of Central and Eastern Europe from where many of
the inmates came. A gnarled and broken tree -- symbolizing the continuity
of life after the pain and suffering inflicted on this site -- grows in
a triangular space, which recalls the triangular badge that every prisoner
had to wear.
Around the interior perimeter floor are the names of the cities, ghettos
and camps from which the inmates were transported to the Little Camp.
The inscription, which appears in six languages on the interior walls of the memorial, and is set forth in tonight’s program, summarizes what conditions were like in the Little Camp.
The commitment demonstrated by our German partners to confront the past by revealing it truthfully and accurately must be recognized and commended. It is of critical importance in order to defeat attempts at denial, distortion and de-sanctification of the Holocaust. The Nazi’s expected that mankind would refuse to believe that such atrocities could have been committed and that doubt and forgetfulness would come with the passage of time. Your presence here tonight, and the success of this great museum, irrefutably prove how wrong they were.
The Nazi’s created a monument to evil called Buchenwald, we have created a monument to memory. Their monument was built on terror and fear – ours is built on hope and resolve.
Lastly, and most importantly, I speak directly to the many survivors and their families who are with us this evening – survivors of the Little Camp and other camps and killing centers. We can never know your pain or the unimaginable suffering you went through. Long after you and your families have passed on, there will be many of us who did not experience the agony of the Holocaust who will still carry forth the memory of what happened and pass it on to future generations.
You have made it clear that the most important thing for you is to know the world will not forget – that future generations bear witness on your behalf. It is my belief that the cause of remembrance is strong and my expectation that it will remain so. What you endured will not be forgotten.
…Why? – Because it’s important.
God Bless You. God Bless America.
