Nobody would have imagined such a crime.
We have such an event,
such a cloud to point at, a cloud of fire,
and nothing happened to the world? They haven't learned anything?
I don't want the past to become
anyone's future. --You really couldn't
imagine doing the things that they did to the Jews without hating them.
you couldn't imagine taking them out of their homes, sending them
to concentration camps and to ghettos. --We are
in the midst of a transition to a world without eyewitnesses,
and we are losing our survivors
our very best teachers. We're going to have
ever greater challenges to bring this history to younger generations
who will have had no exposure to Holocaust survivors
and will have had much more exposure to hate and denial
on the Internet.
Everything that the Nazis tried to destroy,
we are trying to save.
This is the diary of Otto Wolf.
He was just 15 when the Holocaust began for him,
and he tells the story of his escape into the Czech forests
where he hid with his family for three years.
How was it that he survived those three years?
Because people were hiding him from town to town. He even has one
entry here where he says, "How can I continue to be so lucky?"
Just weeks before
liberation, young Otto Wolf was captured by the Gestapo
and murdered in April 1945. This is how we tell
the history of the Holocaust: not as a single
monolithic event but as the story of
six million individual, murders one by one.
We're in a race against time to collect objects like this diary
and to preserve them. When the
survivors and all the eyewitnesses are gone, this evidence will be the sole
a senate witness to the holocaust. Our effort to rescue this
evidence is so enormous that we just simply cannot do it alone.
For me the partnership with the Holocaust Museum of Washington
is providential. --Father Desbois is a perfect example of
the importance of partnership. --In Ukraine, in Belarus, in Russia,
they are living above hundreds and hundreds of mass graves
of Gypsies, of Jews, buried like animals, killed
like animals. --Our documents can help him identify the sites of killing,
and as he goes to these sites, he's able to get testimonies
from people who witnessed the massacres of Jews
in the East. --In one village of Belarus, they asked to Jews to come out of the ghetto
and to dance, and all the Belarusian
village was here to watch. At the end of
this show, the Germans say, "Now the dance is finished."
We go to the shooting and everybody's invited."
We are capturing this critically important eyewitness testimony
that is really going to change the way we understand the Holocaust
in the 21st century, but if we don't make these materials
accessible to the public we've lost the power
these artifacts to teach and inspire.
Every agent goes through the Holocaust Museum before they become a new agent
to understand what can happen to a police power
that becomes underegined and too powerful.
The need for this institution in a very troubled world is more urgent
than ever. It not only studies the history of the Holocaust
in all its dimensions-- Okay, so let's talk about some of the choices that you saw
--but it then takes that history and uses it to engage
today's generation and generations to come in the world that they live in.
What else you seeing about the potential for choice?
My experience having my own kids come here and watching other kids come here is
that you come here and you leav and you are profoundly transformed.
Part of our challenge looking forward is now that we have technology to be a
virtual museum in to reach out around the globe is
How do we replicate very emotional experience for people never set foot in
the museum?
Just come up here and speak toward the screen. --That is an enormous challenge but an enormous
opportunity.
When we say "Never regain," what does it mean, "Never again?"
It happened,
but it could have been prevented.
All those of us who are not part of the survivor generation
feel an enormous responsibility, a moral responsibility, and an educational
responsibility
to pass on the story of the Holocaust. -Our goal is the permanence
of Holocaust memory and relevance, and we'll never be able to achieve that
within our walls in Washington. What we have the chance to build now
is not something you can walk into, it's not something you can see,
but if we do it right it is something that will help change the world.
Some students ask me, "What will happen when all the survivors will be gone?"
The teacher in me says to my stduent,
"Just think: perhaps you are
the only hope I have. Fulfill it."