They are transcripts they are judicial decisions they tell detailed stories of legal wrangling. On a superficial level, these documents resemble those that lawyers use every day. In this way, these documents serve the dual need of this Museum: to assure that the world does not forget the particularity of the Holocaust – the attempt to eradicate Jews because they were Jews – while at the same time enabling the world to draw general lessons from what is displayed and documented here. The documents are a permanent record of what happened, and a safeguard against those who might forget or, even worse, deny. So, too, the documents we donate today perpetuate the memory of those men, women and children who perished, by ensuring that the truth of their fate – that their stories – survive in paper and ink for future generations. It reminds us, as President Bush said here several years ago, that “the words ‘never again’ do not refer to the past - they refer to the future.” It serves as a daily reminder to the leaders of the free world, and to the many visitors to our nation’s capital, that law without conscience is no guarantee of freedom that even the seemingly most advanced of nations can be led down the path of evil and that we must confront horror with action and vigilance, not lethargy and cowardice. And the truth about countries, including our own, that could have done more, sooner, to stop the atrocities.
The truth about those people who watched and did nothing as their neighbors were taken away to the camps. The truth about the evil - there is no other word for it - of the Nazis and their collaborators. This is a Memorial Museum - a physical and educational monument that perpetuates the memory of the six million who perished, by ensuring that the truth of their fate persists. As an institution founded to study and to memorialize the Holocaust and its victims, this Museum is a fitting destination for these records. It is our hope that this donation will help both to advance our understanding of those who perpetrated the horror of the Holocaust, which will strengthen our ability to resist such people, and to deepen our knowledge of the Holocaust’s victims, which will help preserve their memory. Joel Geiderman, Vice Chair of the Council and Sara Bloomfield, the Holocaust Museum’s Director. There are too many to name, but I want to single out a few: Eli Rosenbaum, Director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations Fred Zeidman, Chair of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council Dr. This donation is the result of tremendous effort by many people – not just the people whose labors are recorded in these documents, but also the people who worked to bring about the donation itself. A second set of these decisions will be donated to Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem. It includes transcripts of more than 40 trials and hearings, and the decisions rendered in all of the cases brought by the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, including many that have never been published. With the exception of records from the immediate postwar Allied prosecutions in Europe, this collection is the largest body of English-language primary source materials relating to the prosecution of Nazi criminals publicly available anywhere in the world. It is gratifying as well because of the reason we are here: to mark the Justice Department’s donation of more than 50,000 pages of records of World War II-related denaturalization, extradition, and removal cases. It's an honor to be here in such distinguished company and to be at this extraordinarily important museum. Holocaust Memorial Museum Washington, D.C. Remarks Prepared for Delivery by Attorney General Michael B.
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