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Skriven 2005-01-27 23:32:58 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0501276) for Thu, 2005 Jan 27
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Vice President's Remarks at "Let My People Live" Forum
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For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
January 27, 2005

Vice President's Remarks at "Let My People Live" Forum
Juliusz Slowacki Theater
Krakow, Poland




VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: It is my privilege to join you today as the
representative of the people of the United States. I thank the government
of Poland, and all of those who have organized these commemorations of the
liberation of Auschwitz.

On this day in 1945, inside a prison for the innocent, liberators arrived
and looked into the faces of thousands near death - while, miles beyond the
camp, many thousands more were being led on a death march in the winter
cold.

Inside barbed wire, and behind high walls, soldiers found "baths" that were
not baths ... and hospitals meant not to heal but to kill ... and the
belongings of hundreds of thousands who had vanished.

In the death camps of Europe, men committed some of the greatest wrongs
that the human mind can conceive. Yet today these are hallowed places.
Auschwitz, said one survivor, is the "largest cemetery in the world, one
without gravestones. Only the ashes of countless souls were strewn here."

The camps were also the scene of profound humanity and heroism. From
survivors we know some of the stories of brave resistance ... of helpless
men, women and children giving comfort to one another in their last
terrible moments ... of the righteous, being led to their deaths, affirming
to the end their faith in Almighty God.

The Holocaust occupies a single period in history, but it is not a single
event. It represents millions of individual acts of murder. Each prisoner
who arrived had a name, and a home, and dreams for tomorrow. Each, like you
and me, was a child of God who wanted to live ... who had every right to
live ... who no man had any right to harm.

Gathered in this place we are reminded that such immense cruelty did not
happen in a far-away, uncivilized corner of the world, but rather in the
very heart of the civilized world. The death camps were created by men with
a high opinion of themselves - some of them well educated, and possessed of
refined manners - but without conscience. And where there is no conscience,
there is no tolerance toward others ... no defense against evil ... and no
limit to the crimes that follow.

The story of the camps reminds us that evil is real, and must be called by
its name, and must be confronted. We are reminded that anti-Semitism may
begin with words, but rarely stops with words ... and the message of
intolerance and hatred must be opposed before it turns into acts of horror.

President Bush has said of the Holocaust, "There will come a time when the
eyewitnesses are gone. That is why we are bound by conscience to remember
what happened, and to whom it happened."

At Auschwitz we bear witness to the cruelty, and the suffering, and tragedy
of a time that is still within living memory. On this anniversary of
liberation, we give thanks for the liberators, and for all who labored to
free this continent from tyranny.

We pray that God's mercies are forever with the souls of the departed. And
we look to the future with hope - that He may grant us the wisdom to
recognize evil in all its forms ... and give us the courage to prevent it
from ever rising again.

END

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