The Power of Truth

FRITZIE FRITSHALL There's no way to explain, and it will not
go away. One of the hardest things for me to this day, is to talk about this ride in
this boxcar. The boxcar they loaded us onto, they had to push us in. And the door locked.
There is no food and no water. Babies are crying. Mothers are crying. And the babies
are dying from lack of food and lack of air. Your own grandfather dies in this compartment
going to Auschwitz concentration camp with you.
STEFAN KUCHAREK Kucharek: The track went in that direction.
Question: You just delivered? Kucharek: I just brought the cars and the
Jews were unloaded. I took the cars and that's it...end of story.
SARA BLOOMFIELD Every single day we are losing some aspect
of the authentic voice of the Holocaust, whether it's the loss of the survivors, the other
eyewitnesses, or the deterioration of the material, every single day.
FRED ZEIDMAN There's been a tremendous, tremendous growth
in Holocaust denial, while survivors are here to tell the story. What happens when they
are gone? There has got to be tangible evidence that this happened.
KLAUS MUELLER If you think that in archives materials are
always well kept, you're wrong. Paper deteriorates, there is water damage.
SARA BLOOMFIELD We are in a race against time every single
day.
KLAUS MUELLER We work at the state archive in Berlin. We
inventoried and safeguarded the one and only documentation of a Nazi court from 1933 to
1945. Seven million pages. That is one of many projects we are working on in Germany
but also in Europe. And our goal is to make materials available that have never been available
for researchers. All the collections that we are bringing to Washington give us a new
and much deeper knowledge of the Holocaust, and this is really our core mission.
SARA BLOOMFIELD Last year we reached over 24 million people,
and most of them are not walking through our doors. Hate lives today on the Internet, and
we are reaching people all over the world on the Internet where our problems are globalized
and so are our opportunities.
ELIE WIESEL He who hates one group hates all groups. He
who hates one minority hates all minorities. Wherever and whenever a project even close
to similar to that project that Hitler had for the Jews and some other people, we must
immediately do whatever we can to stop it.
SARA BLOOMFIELD The world we live in today calls for being
bold.
MADELEINE K. ALBRIGHT I am very grateful to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum and the American Academy of Diplomacy and U.S. Institute of Peace, because I think
it is a very interesting and important combination of talents.
RICHARD H. SOLOMON One of the objectives of the Genocide Prevention
Task Force is to get the prevention of mass violence, mass atrocities, and genocide on
the president's own agenda. The most hoped-for result of the Task Force is more preventive
action.
FRED ZEIDMAN We have extraordinary partnerships all over
the world. Today's technology has truly enabled us to reach the entire world instantaneously.
MICHAEL GRAHAM Our newest project is called World Is Witness.
We try to profile both stories of courage and stories of reality and try to find that
balance between helping people to understand what they can do but also reminding us all
of what's really happening.
FRITZIE FRITSHALL We wonder today why did someone not stand
up, why did our community not stand up? We were their neighbors. How could they turn
their heads on us? How could they turn their hearts so hard that they didn’t see and
they didn't care?
SHEILA POLK I have taken ethics courses for 26 years now
as a prosecutor and have never been touched or impacted in the way that the lessons of
the Holocaust impacted me. The program begins with the Nazi rise to power and chronicles
the role of law enforcement and prosecutors and now judges in allowing the Holocaust to
happen. By the time I had finished the course I went from believing that the Holocaust had
nothing to do with me and my role as Yavapai county attorney, to knowing that the Holocaust
has everything to do with my role as county attorney, with my role as a prosecutor. And
with me as a person. By the time I flew out of Washington D.C. the next day and made it
back to Prescott, Arizona, I was already thinking that I want all the prosecutors in Arizona
to have the advantage of this course.
REBECCA DUPAS One of the greatest lessons of the Museum
is not to be a bystander. That when you see things going wrong it is your duty to speak
out in some capacity to stop that type of injustice.
FRED ZEIDMAN It'll happen again and again and again unless
the rest of us stop it.
SARA BLOOMFIELD We must push ourselves constantly to be bigger
than we think we can be.
MICHAEL GRAHAM We have such a powerful opportunity at the
Museum to make a difference. If we don't do it, no one else will.