Deborah Lipstadt: Thank you, Josh. As Josh just mentioned, my book is dedicated to Stephen
Tyrone Johns and the two officers who returned fire, and I'd like to read from the dedication.
"This book was researched while I was the Resnick Scholar at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum. I had outstanding colleagues, extensive scholarly resources, and the freedom to write.
Then tragedy struck.
At noon June 10, 2009 Special Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns, a guard much beloved by the
staff, saw an elderly man approaching. Eager to be of help, Special Officer Johns pushed
open the heavy door. Instead of entering, the man--an 88-year-old racist, anti-Semite,
and Holocaust denier--raised a rifle from beneath his coat and shot Stephen Tyrone Johns.
He was murdered trying to do a kindness. Most mornings, including that day, when I arrived
at the Special Officer Johns would be there. Often he would kid me about the books I had
in tow. He had a friendly word for everyone. I had passed his station on my way to give
a lecture a few moments before this incident and saw him at the door welcoming people.
The Museum reopened two days later. The staff was unsure if people would be too frightened
to return. Shortly before the opening I went outside to see if anyone was there. I fought
back the tears when I saw the crowd. The line stretched around the block and down the street.
It was significantly larger than for a normal June day. People said that they were there
in order to demonstrate that the bigots could not frighten them. They had come because the
shooter wanted to keep them away. Visiting an institution dedicated to teaching about
the Holocaust and fighting genocide had become an act of defiance.
It is with deep gratitude and sadness that I dedicate this books--this book--and these
remarks to the memory of Special Officer Johns and to the two officers whose quick response
prevented this tragedy from assuming greater proportions. Special Officers Johns, Harry
Weeks and Jason "Mac" McCuiston's sheer professionalism are the hallmarks of this institution. We
who were there, the thousands of people who visit on a daily basis, and the multitudes
who benefit from the myriad of activities owe them and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's
entire staff more than can be imagined. This is a very small token of that gratitude."
[applause]
Your applause are for the staff who I know are scattered all about and who make this
event possible.
On April 11, 1961, Beit Ha'am, Jerusalem’s cultural center, was packed. Over 700 people
filled the theatre for the trial Adolf Eichmann. Reporters from the world over were there,
including our honoree, as Josh mentioned, this evening, Elie Wiesel, who was covering
it for the Forward. Television cameras recorded every moment. More reporters were in Jerusalem
than had gone to Nuremberg. Why was this trial, coming just after the conclusion of Passover,
different from the Nuremberg tribunals, where far more prominent Nazis had been tried? Some
of the differences were connected to the "when" of the two events. Nuremberg occurred immediately
after the war. People needed a mental respite. At Nuremberg multiple defendants had been
in the dock. Now one man stood alone. The Jerusalem drama was intensified by the way
Eichmann had been brought to trial. Captured in Argentina, he had been spirited out of
the country to Israel.
But, the "when" and the "how" of his capture were eclipsed by the "who": who found him
and, more importantly, who would try him. Nuremberg had constituted "victors' justice."
Now the victims' representatives would sit in judgment. Immediately after the war most
survivors were focused on trying to piece together a new life. Even if they had wanted
to bring those who had destroyed their world to justice, they had no way to do so. By 1961,
the war's immediacy had passed. The survivors, whose wounds had begun to be bound up by the
passage of time, now had the stamina to demand justice. Most importantly, however, now there
was a sovereign entity to deliver it. The State of Israel, then entering its Bar Mitzvah
year, exemplified the victims' emergence from the powerlessness that enabled--had enabled--the
Final Solution.
This was the first time since the year 70, when the Romans sacked the Temple in Jerusalem,
that Jews would sit in judgment on a non-Jew who had done them wrong. There was no need
to turn to other governments as supplicants and say: "Do justice." This time, the victims
could do it themselves.
When history, memory, and the law met in this Jerusalem theater, everything changed regarding
Holocaust remembrance. This trial opened the world's eyes to genocide in an unprecedented
fashion. This was the result of a crucial decision made by Prosecutor Gideon Hausner.
Anxious to capture the world's imagination, to make it grasp this enormous crime, Hausner
called a hundred survivors as witnesses. They told their story "one by one by one." They
made this saga a very personal one. They told of thousands being subjected to shootings
and gas chambers. And they told of individual suffering, including that of the children.
Professor George Wellers of Paris described a small boy he met at Drancy, where Jewish
children were held without their parents. They slept over a hundred to a room, on "straw
mattresses," which he described for the court as "filthy, disgusting, and full of vermin."
No adult were allowed nearby. They awoke during the night screaming for their parents. Some
were too young to know their own names. Wellers described how he and another camp inmate went
to see the children. One boy "remarkably handsome, with a face which was very intelligent ... wore
clothes which must have once been of very good quality, rather stylish, but now in a
pitiful condition. One foot was bare." Wellers asked the young boy about his parents. The
boy said, "My father goes to the office and Mummy plays the piano." They reassured him
that he would soon join his parents, even though they knew the child was headed for
Auschwitz. The child showed them a biscuit he was saving for his mother. Wellers' companion
"bent over the little boy who looked very happy, very engaging." Wellers went on to
tell the court, "He took the child's face in his hands to stroke his head, and at that
moment the child, who only a moment ago had been so happy, burst into tears." When the
French police came to deport the four thousand children, many of the children fought and
had to be brought to the roundup place "struggling and screaming."
Many people in the courtroom assumed that when the resistance fighters testified there
would be stories of victory, of resistance, of fighting. But each of the fighters admonished
the courtroom: "Do not ask why more did not fight back. Ask how anybody could fight back
at all. That was the miracle."
There were unexpected moments of uplift. When Melchior, the son of Denmark’s Chief Rabbi
testified, he described how united Denmark had been on that day when the Jews were warned
by his father to flee to friends and neighbors where they would be helped to make their way
to Sweden. On that day, the young Melchior went to the university library to, in what
may be described as an aggravated show of responsibility, return some library books.
Twice in the ten minutes he was there, groups of students he did not know stopped him to
tell him: "We know who you are. Here is how to contact us. Call us, call us if there is
anything we can do to help." As Melchior told his story one woman in the courtrroom wept.
When asked why she wept, she said: "I always cry when people are kind to me."
It is often said that prior to the Eichmann trial, survivors of the Holocaust did not
speak of their experiences. That is not the case. Many did speak. Some wrote books, there
were films. There was not total silence about the Holocaust--there was nothing compared
to what it is today--but there was not total silence.
What then changed because of the Eichmann trial? Not the speakers, but the world they
were addressing. The world began to listen. And today the millions who visit this institution
continue to listen.
Time is passing all too quickly. I am reminded of that fact as I look out on this room. I
see many faces of people who built this institution. But I also see lacunae, I see gaps: the faces
of those who are gone. Miles Lerman, Ben Meed, Bill Lowenberg, Hadassah Rosensaft and other
survivors, all of whom were driven to ensure that this museum would be built and that it
would be the world-class institution that it is.
And though we wish every survivor, every person who can speak in the first-person singular,
who can say "this is my story, this is what happened to me," a full measure of days--ad
meah v'esrim, as the traditional Jewish blessing goes--we know that will not be. The tyranny
of the chronological clock cannot be fought.
They have passed the torch of remembrance to the next generations. Those who follow
them, including the young people such as those I teach, must now take on the responsibility.
Those who built so very well have turned to us and said: "Guard our stories, teach our
history and help the world reckon with the tragedy which was our fate."
For the sake of all those--but particularly the survivors--who built this institution
and always thought of its existence as a miracle, for those who gave so much of their lives
to it, and especially for Special Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns who gave his life to
this institution, let us pray that we will be worthy of the task of protecting, preserving,
and growing the Holocaust Museum. v’chen yehi ratzon. And so may it come to be. Thank
you very much.
[applause]