Ceremony Honoring Simon Wiesenthal Remarks on Presenting a Special Gold Medal to Mr. Wiesenthal on Behalf of the Congress.

THE PRESIDENT. Senator McGovern, Senator Boschwitz, Senator Warner, distinguished guests and visitors in this home, including several members of my own Cabinet:

Many historic events have occurred in this particular room and in this historic house, events that have transformed our Nation and the future, events which have been inspirational, events which have reminded us of troubled times, events which have brought to our minds the memory of heroism and great achievement, events which have also reminded us of tragedy and the fallibility of human beings. Today with this commemoration of the achievement of one single human being, who sometimes was lonely, sometimes unrecognized, we combined all those emotions which have filled this room in years gone by into one notable event.

We're here today to honor a man of incomparable courage and conviction-Simon Wiesenthal. Last November, the Congress passed a bill authorizing this medal on my right to be given in recognition of Mr. Wiesenthal's contributions to international justice. Some might think we're here to honor him, but, as a matter of fact, his presence here honors us and honors this home and the principles for which it stands.

Simply his presence here is an exciting thing for me. I met him earlier, in 1976. As a matter of fact, he gave me his good wishes and we exchanged in just a few minutes some memorable thoughts between two men who encountered each other on life's way. That's an insignificant fact in his life.

Why we're here today is to talk about what has occurred during the last 42 years, because that long ago, in 1938, Simon Wiesenthal was a young architect, the holder of a university degree, the proud owner of his new business. At the age of 30, he had all the eagerness and all the potential and all the ambition and all the imagination of youth, yet no one could have imagined the situation in which he would find himself just 4 years later. No one could have guessed the scope of the injustice which swept over his life. Because he was Jewish, he was denied all opportunity, he was denied all freedoms. Under the Nazis, Simon Wiesenthal and many other Jews did not even have the right to exist.

Simon Wiesenthal defied the Nazis. For 4 years he fought for his own life and tried to protect those others who were with him. He was one of only 34 prisoners to survive out of an original group of 149,000, and then after his survival he carried on for those who could not. He vowed to build justice before he would return to building houses. He set up the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna, Austria, and from there for more than three decades, he's led the search for the Nazi war criminals. Persistently, tirelessly, courageously, sometimes almost alone, he's coordinated the pursuit of those who terrorized and took the lives of so many European men and women and children.

His goal has not just been to see justice done, not just to see criminals punished. His motive has not only been to seek revenge but to remember and to make certain that never again will such a crime against decency and civility and humanity be committed—never.

It's up to all of us to harness the outrage of our memories to banish all human oppression. We must recognize that when any fellow human being is stripped of humanity, when any person is turned into an object of torture or is defiled or is victimized by terrorism or prejudice or racism, that all human beings are victims. Simon Wiesenthal has devoted his life to preventing genocide. We must join him.

There are generations today who were born and raised and who are raising their own children now, who know the Holocaust only as history, if they know it at all. What we tell them they will pass on not just to our grandchildren but to the descendants that we will never see. We owe these generations something more than just the legacy of a lawlessness that they will never be able to fathom, a crime that they will never be able to comprehend. They must understand that Nazis were human beings who went awry. They must realize that human beings are capable of unspeakable, unbelievable atrocities. Human beings. But they must also understand that people can only be molded in the image of evil when they have no principles of their own to uphold, that people are moved to violence only when they are not convinced of the strength of peace.

We must convince our children of the strength of peace by dedicating ourselves to the pursuit of peace. We must instill in them an undying commitment to human rights by demonstrating our commitment to human rights.

We saw what happened when human rights were violated and trod upon with violence. Eleven million people were slaughtered, 6 million of them Jews. Even today the survivors are not spared the savagery which they escaped physically, because they only have to close their own eyes now, still to see it. We have to open our own eyes and keep them open. We need to be forever wary of force, forever cautious of excessive power. Our conscience must never waver. Our memory must never die.

Simon Wiesenthal has helped to teach us that. He's a unique example of all those who value the pursuit of peace and who work to strengthen human rights. Yet, no matter how eloquent any of us try to be about Simon Wiesenthal, he explains himself best, and I particularly like this quote. When my secretary handed me this typed card with the quote on it, she had tears in her eyes, and she said, "Mr. President, I like that man." This is what he had to say: "I believe in God and in the world to come. When each of us comes before the 6 million, we will be asked what we did with our lives. One will say that he became a watch-maker and another will say that he became a tailor... but I will say, 'I did not forget you.'" Nor, Simon Wisenthal, will the world ever forget you.

MR. WIESENTHAL. Mr. President, Mrs. Carter, excellencies, distinguished ladies and gentlemen:

It was a long way from the shacks in the Mauthausen concentration camp to where I stand today. It took 35 years from the 5th of May, 1945. That 5th of May, we were 900 prisoners in block six, in the dead block, and there seemed little chance of survival for any of us. Life expectancy was not more than a few days, a few weeks at most, a few hours for many among us. We in the dead block were already too weak to work, even by SS standards. The little food we were given was cheaper than a bullet. Those who were still strong enough to walk around were keeping us informed about the progress of the German retreat.

As the American troops approached, our guards fled in panic, leaving us to our fate. Our doctor came running into our hut shouting, "The Americans are coming." The cry made us gather whatever strength was left in us. Those who could move at all staggered and crawled out of the shacks. I was among them that made it. A bright sun helped us to celebrate the moment of liberation. American tanks had entered the camp, and every prisoner struggled to get to them. I was about 150 yards from the first tank. The soldiers who had come with it were surrounded by prisoners, sinking into their arms, crying and laughing at the same time, exalted beyond any ordinary feeling.

I covered the first hundred yards but then collapsed on the ground. I was lying there trying to get up again, panting and staring, fascinated at the American flag.

In the times of suffering we were all looking for symbols to cling to, and in this moment of liberation I was seeing the stars on the flag as symbols not only for the States of the Union but for all the things we had lost in the Nazi Holocaust. Every star had acquired a meaning of its own. One was the star of hope; one of justice, of tolerance, of friendship, of brotherly love, of understanding, and so on. I cannot remember to how many stars I gave a name, how many I called by something beautiful, something desirable for the future, which we have rebuilt. And in the stripes I saw the roads to freedom. I don't know how long I sat there staring at the flag, daydreaming. At that moment I understood those who gave their lives for defense of their flag.

Then suddenly, two strong hands picked me up and carried me back to the hut. I don't know whose hands they were, but they put me down gently and I sat beside the other prisoners on the steps of the dead block, warming myself in the midday sun. A little later I saw prisoners from other blocks marching by—Czechs, Poles, Italians, and others—each group carrying their nation's flag. They had secretly made them for the day of liberation. I looked around me. We were all Jews, and I became aware that only we Jews had no flag. I was longing for such a symbol of liberty and national dignity. One of us had a faded blue shirt; I had one which had once been white. We took them off. Another prisoner managed to make them into something like a blue and white flag. We were much too weak to attempt a parade like the other groups, and so we just sat there in the sun holding and waving our makeshift flag.

Jews from other blocks came over and cried. Some of them kissed our flag, a symbol of hope amidst dead and dying. At that moment I felt instinctively that my future life would be determined by these two flags, the American flag as a symbol of our liberation—for which I will always be grateful—and of the promise that we would be able to go on living as free men, the Jewish flag as a symbol of people resurrected from the ashes of destruction. There was never a problem of double loyalty for me. On the contrary, it was a symbiosis—liberty for us and for the world through the United States, and dignity for the Jews as a nation through Israel. These notions have become the pillars of my own life and my work ever since.

I found that it was impossible to resume my life as an architect, which had been brutally interrupted, as if nothing had happened. You know what I have fought for in these 35 years. I don't have to tell you the story of my life. It strived for justice. And this fight for justice was so easy for me because I am not a hater, and the word "revenge" has no meaning for me.

Looking back on these 35 years that have since passed, there is one thing I can say. Having survived through nothing less than a miracle, I am reminded of those who suffered with me, their last thoughts, their hopes, and their fears. They have become my own.

I have done all I could to help to prevent a recurrence of this Holocaust for us and also for all other peoples. Unfortunately, there is no denying that Hitler and Stalin are alive today, not necessarily in the same countries, but under new and different guises. Their successors have adapted themselves and their style to their respective situations. They are waiting for us to forget, because this is what makes their resurrection possible. Sad to say, evil has not disappeared with the physical death of these two monsters, Hitler and Stalin.

The fight is too dangerous to mankind. It's a great responsibility for which everybody who is willing should devote himself.

Whenever I am a guest in your beautiful country, I am reminded of the fact that it was the U.S. Army, American soldiers, who 35 years ago gave me a second lease on my life. It is something I will never forget. The great idea of liberty behind the American flag is still a strong force in this divided world of ours. It gives the freedom-loving people in many different countries the strength to resist those who want to enslave them. And the flag we once made from two crumpled shirts in front of the dead block, which at that time was just a symbol of survival, in the meantime has become the proud flag of Israel, a country whose very existence ensures us against a recurrence of the Holocaust.

Mr. President, the honor you and the Congress have conferred upon me today I accept in the name of those for whom, I hope, through the work of my life, I have earned the right to speak. I am only their trustee. In reality you are honoring them who cannot be with us today.

Mr. President, I thank you.