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“INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY” mentioning Benjamin L. Cardin was published in the Senate section on pages S165-S166 on Jan. 27.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
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The publication is reproduced in full below:
INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY
Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, today the world comes together to remember the horrors of the Holocaust. We honor the 6 million Jews and 5 million others--Roma, Afro-Germans, gay men and women, people with disabilities and more--whom the Nazis brutally murdered. And we stand in awe and celebration of those brave souls who managed to survive.
It is difficult to comprehend the terror that took place in Europe between 1939 and 1945, but we carry on an obligation to those who perished and those who survived to prevent further genocide and mass atrocities. It is critical that we understand what happened to them so we can prevent it from ever happening again.
One of the most important things to understand about the Holocaust is that while a limited group of particularly evil monsters orchestrated it, they could not have succeeded without the active or tacit support of millions of average people. Men and women agreed to turn over their neighbors, patrol the ghettos, drive the cattle cars, guard the death camps, and line people up to shoot them down. Men and women decided to avert their gaze and do nothing to stop the atrocities.
I don't believe that all those people were born villains. I think they were taught by their communities to adopt a level of anti-Semitism and prejudice that likely would have been recognizable to many of us today and that the Nazi propaganda masters exploited those feelings. That terrifies me because it means that the Holocaust was not an anomaly. It means that under the right conditions, a similar atrocity could happen again.
The hatred that gave rise to the Holocaust is still very much alive. The Anti-Defamation League's 2014 Global Index of Anti-Semitism found that more than 1 billion people--nearly one in eight--around the world harbor anti-Semitic attitudes. Over 30 percent of those surveyed said that it was ``probably true'' that Jews had too much control over financial markets, that Jews think they are better than other people, that Jews are disloyal to their country, and that people hate Jews because of the way that Jews behave. Such sentiments often translate into violence, leading 40 percent of European Jews to report in 2018 that they lived in daily fear of being physically attacked.
Sadly, these trends bear out closer to home too. Jews make up fewer than 3 percent of the American population, but the majority of reported religion-based hate crimes targeted Jewish people or institutions. In 2019, the ADL reported that anti-Semitism in America had hit a four-
decade high. According to the 2020 survey by the American Jewish Committee, more than one-third of American Jews say they have been verbally or physically assaulted during the past 5 years simply because they are Jewish.
I believe that the world looks to the United States for moral leadership. When we allow anti-Semitism or racism or other kinds of intolerance to flourish here, other countries take that as a license to do the same. Moreover, we need to recognize the nexus between and networking among those who traffic in hate and conspiracies in the United States and other like-minded individuals and groups around the globe. Combating the most dangerous forms of this bigotry will require understanding the ways in which such groups are reinforcing and learning from each other.
Unfortunately, the last 4 years--beginning with White nationalists chanting ``Jews will not replace us'' in Charlottesville and ending with an insurrectionist wearing a ``Camp Auschwitz'' sweatshirt while storming the Capitol--are a dark stain on this country's record. By allowing such vicious hatred to take root and to grow, we fail ourselves, and we fail the rest of the world.
Now we have the opportunity to redeem ourselves--to become leaders once more in the fight to eliminate anti-Semitism and all forms of hatred around the globe. It will not be easy, but it is something we have to do, and it starts with education.
In the ADL's 2014 global survey, 35 percent of the respondents had never heard of the Holocaust, and 28 percent of those who did know of it believed that the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust had been greatly exaggerated. Meanwhile, the AJC's 2020 Survey of the General Public found that nearly one-quarter of Americans know nothing or not much about the Holocaust, and nearly one-half are not even sure what the term ``anti-Semitism'' means.
How can we hope to learn as a society from the horrors of the Holocaust if so many people do not know or do not believe that it happened? How can we root out anti-Semitism if almost half of us don't understand what it is?
We must educate the next generation on the horrors of the Holocaust and the dangers of intolerance. I am proud to have led efforts to provide the full funding of a bill, which our Presiding Officer was very much involved with, the Never Again Education Act, and I thank our Presiding Officer for her leadership on this issue. That bill expanded the reach of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's world-renowned education program. This will allow educators across the country from K-
12 through college to access age-appropriate curriculum on the Holocaust. It will also bolster the Holocaust Memorial Museum's continued collection and use of survivor testimony so that tomorrow's leaders will see and hear for themselves why we must never again allow hatred to thrive.
At the same time, we must fight against Holocaust denial in any form in any part of the world. As the Organization for Security and Co-
operation in Europe's Parliamentary Assembly's Special Representative on Anti-Semitism, Racism and Intolerance, I am committed to countering attempts to erase or revise the events of the Holocaust, such as Poland's efforts to punish those who speak the truth about the 3 million Jews killed there. I am deeply disturbed, for instance, by the news of a slander lawsuit against two Polish scholars for their writings on Jews forced into hiding during the Nazi occupation. I am also appalled that Hungary's Viktor Orban has erected a monument that tries to whitewash Hungary's wartime role in the murder of more than a half-million Hungarian Jews. On a day we remember the liberation of Auschwitz, I remember, too, that one out of every three Jews who died there were Hungarian.
The Holocaust happened, and it can happen again. It can. We made a promise to our grandparents and to our grandchildren that it would never happen again. I believe that we are all each responsible for keeping that promise. So let us heed the lessons of the past in order to build a more peaceful, just, and compassionate future for all.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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