Name: ホロコースト追悼式 (Holocaust Days of Remembrance Ceremony)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T04:52:59.000Z
Duration: 13 min 22 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much -- (applause) -- to Sara

Bloomfield, for the wonderful introduction and the outstanding

work that she's doing; to Fred Zeidman; Joel Geiderman; Mr.

Wiesel -- thank you for your wisdom and your witness; Speaker

Nancy Pelosi; Senator Dick Durbin; members of Congress; our

good friend the Ambassador of Israel; members of the United

States Holocaust Memorial Council; and most importantly,

the survivors and rescuers and their families who are here today.

It is a great honor for me to be here, and I'm grateful that I

have the opportunity to address you briefly.

We gather today to mourn the loss of so many lives, and

celebrate those who saved them; honor those who survived, and

contemplate the obligations of the living.

It is the grimmest of ironies that one of the most savage,

barbaric acts of evil in history began in one of the most

modernized societies of its time, where so many markers of

human progress became tools of human depravity: science that

can heal used to kill; education that can enlighten used to

rationalize away basic moral impulses; the bureaucracy that

sustains modern life used as the machinery of mass death -- a

ruthless, chillingly efficient system where many were

responsible for the killing, but few got actual blood on their hands.

While the uniqueness of the Holocaust in scope and in method

is truly astounding, the Holocaust was driven by many of

the same forces that have fueled atrocities throughout history:

the scapegoating that leads to hatred and blinds us to our

common humanity; the justifications that replace

conscience and allow cruelty to spread; the willingness of those

who are neither perpetrators nor victims to accept the assigned

role of bystander, believing the lie that good people are ever

powerless or alone, the fiction that we do not have a choice.

But while we are here today to bear witness to the human

capacity to destroy, we are also here to pay tribute to the human

In the moral accounting of the Holocaust, as we reckon with

numbers like 6 million, as we recall the horror of numbers

etched into arms, we also factor in numbers like these: 7,200 --

the number of Danish Jews ferried to safety, many of whom

later returned home to find the neighbors who rescued them had

also faithfully tended their homes and businesses and

We remember the number five -- the five righteous men and women

We are awed by your acts of courage and conscience.

And your presence today compels each of us to ask ourselves

We also remember the number 5,000 -- the number of Jews

rescued by the villagers of Le Chambon, France -- one life

Not a single Jew who came there was turned away, or turned in.

But it was not until decades later that the villagers spoke

of what they had done -- and even then, only reluctantly.

The author of a book on the rescue found that those he

interviewed were baffled by his interest.

"How could you call us 'good'?" they said.

That is the question of the righteous -- those who would do

extraordinary good at extraordinary risk not for

affirmation or acclaim or to advance their own interests, but

They remind us that no one is born a savior or a murderer --

these are choices we each have the power to make.

They teach us that no one can make us into bystanders without

our consent, and that we are never truly alone -- that if we

have the courage to heed that "still, small voice" within us,

we can form a minyan for righteousness that can span a

And the question is, how do we honor and preserve it?

How do we ensure that "never again" isn't an empty slogan, or

merely an aspiration, but also a call to action?

I believe we start by doing what we are doing today -- by bearing

witness, by fighting the silence that is evil's greatest co-conspirator.

In the face of horrors that defy comprehension, the impulse to

My own great uncle returned from his service in World War II in a

state of shock, saying little, alone with painful memories that

He went up into the attic, according to the stories that

I've heard, and wouldn't come down for six months.

He was one of the liberators -- someone who at a very tender age

And so some of the liberators who are here today honor us with

their presence -- all of whom we honor for their extraordinary service.

My great uncle was part of the 89th Infantry Division -- the

first Americans to reach a Nazi concentration camp.

And they liberated Ohrdruf, part of Buchenwald, where tens of

The story goes that when the Americans marched in, they

discovered the starving survivors and the piles of dead bodies.

He ordered Germans from the nearby town to tour the camp, so

they could see what had been done in their name.

And he ordered American troops to tour the camp, so they could

Then he invited congressmen and journalists to bear witness.

And he ordered that photographs and films be made.

Some of us have seen those same images, whether in the Holocaust

Museum or when I visited Yad Vashem, and they never leave you.