Remarks
                               of
                     Secretary Dan Glickman
                       Day of Remembrance
               Lincoln Theatre -- April 21, 1998

      Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the
things your eyes saw, and lest these things depart your heart all the days of
your life. And you shall make them known to your children and to your
children's children.'

     Those words from Deuteronomy are inscribed in the Hall of Remembrance at
the Holocaust Museum. In Judaism, we are taught to remember. We have holidays
that date back to events in our history some 4,000 years that we may learn
from the experiences of our ancestors.

     In this great country of ours, we remember those who have fought and
died for the cause of freedom and liberty; we remember the valiant struggle of
our forefathers rising up against tyranny and oppression to establish a new
form of government  of, by and for the people;' we remember Dr. King and the
many others who gave their lives so that all of us could enjoy basic human
rights. 

     We teach our children about the past, so that they may better understand
the nature of events happening around them and act with wisdom and compassion.
Through hindsight we gain foresight. In his Day of Remembrance message,
President Clinton tells us,  Only by passing on to each new generation the
stark truth of the Holocaust can we ensure that its horrors will never be
repeated.'

     In preparation for this event, I looked up the word  remembrance' in the
dictionary. The first definition was pretty straightforward --  the act of
remembering.' The second definition surprised me. It was  the power of
remembering.'

     I feel a lot of strength and power in this room today. By opening our
hearts and minds to remembrance, we refuse to turn away from the darkest
chapter of human history. Instead, we seek to comprehend the incomprehensible.
We ask ourselves: Why? And, we ask ourselves: How? ... How can we in our own
lives today ensure the past is not prologue? 

     In answer to that question, we remember the dead and their suffering.
But we also must pay homage to the good ... to those who rose up and fought
evil ... often paying for their bravery with their lives and those of their
families.

     Today, we will learn about the heroic actions of some of the men and
women of Southern Europe who resisted the Nazi's and put their lives on the
line to save 80% of the Jews in Italy and its occupied territories. Where
others turned away, a few brave people took action, and answered a higher
moral imperative. 

     No matter what physically was taken away from them ... no matter if they
paid the ultimate price for their heroism, through their courageous acts,
through their recognition that the most powerful weapon in Hitler's arsenal
was indifference, through their active resistance, they clung to what mattered
most: their humanity.

     Six million Jews... 4 million gypsies, gays and lesbians, people with
mental and physical disabilities, the list goes on and on. The heroes of
Southern Europe could not close their eyes to evil. After all, it was the
Italian poet Dante who wrote:  The hottest places in hell are reserved for
those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.' The
heroes we honor today knew that neutrality meant ceding their own humanity.

     In the five decades since the end of World War II, our world continues
to see racism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, anti-Semitism, oppression, hatred
of difference -- mindless divisions all. We must remember the lessons of the
Holocaust and resist indifference. 

     We must refuse to see the past as one major event after another, but a
series of individual choices. We, too, have choices: How we treat one another.
How we react to the mistreatment of others -- in our own communities or
halfway around the world. How we raise our children -- what lessons, what
values we teach them. 

     Our great country is built on basic principles of freedom, liberty and
human rights. But our country is great because we as a people seek to live
these principles and share them with the world. For us, freedom, equality and
human dignity are values that transcend  man-made boundaries. This is why we
celebrate a new peace agreement in Ireland. This is why we fling open our arms
to a young democratic leader from China, now taking his first breaths of
freedom in 3 « years.

     In these pursuits, America's values are human values. However remote the
cries, however distant the land, resisting terror and tyranny is a fundamental
duty of humanity. We must never close our eyes or plug our ears. We must
always remember and resist, and we must never forget the power that rests
within each of us to change the course of world events. 

     Robert Kennedy once said,   It is from numberless diverse acts of
courage and belief that human history is shaped.  Each time a man stands up
for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against
injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope; and crossing each other from
a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a
current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and
resistance.'

     This century has borne witness to the darkest corners of men's souls,
yet in these very moments, we also have seen glimpses of the very best in
human nature -- courage, compassion, a willingness to give one's own life to
improve the fate of humankind. 

     Without these sacrifices, what would our lives be like today? What will
future generations say of our own? I hope it is that we remembered the lessons
of history. That we understood that evil feeds on indifference. That we found
in our own lives a way every day to be brave, to be courageous, to lift up the
lot of humanity ... that is the legacy that the heroes of the Holocaust give
to every future generation ... it is a legacy of hope.

     Thank you.

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