REMEMBERING THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ

On 2026-02-02, Representative Jennifer A. Kiggans (R-VA-2) delivered a floor speech titled "REMEMBERING THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ" in the House. The speech addressed immigration and also covered the environment, foreign policy.

REMEMBERING THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 23 (Monday, February 2, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 23 (Monday, February 2, 2026)] [Extensions of Remarks] [Page E87] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] REMEMBERING THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ _____ HON. JENNIFER A. KIGGANS of virginia in the house of representatives Monday, February 2, 2026 Mrs. KIGGANS of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the following remarks submitted at the request of a Virginia Beach constituent, Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman of Temple Lev Tikvah, which reflect his views: Dr. Marc Saperstein, distinguished author, rabbi, scholar and professor, taught at Harvard University (where he earned his doctorate), Washington University, George Washington University, and was principal of Leo Baeck College in London, England. Marc's late father, Rabbi Harold Saperstein, served Temple Emanu-El of Lynbrook, New York, from 1933 to 1980. He responded to Nazism early on in 1934 with his sermon, ``Call to Battle.'' Marc's brother Rabbi David Saperstein was the illustrious Director of Reform Judaism's Religious Action Center, as well as the American Ambassador at large for International Religious Freedom. Dr. Saperstein's exhaustive and impressive tome (Agony in the Pulpit: Jewish Preaching in Response to Nazi Persecution and Mass Murder from 1933 to 1945) appealed to my searching and critical eye as a family member of the Holocaust's surviving remnant of European Jewry. Saperstein states, ``My book is a rebuttal to the accusation that American Jews in general, and their rabbinic leaders, in particular, remained silent; that they failed to speak out on behalf of the suffering Jews of Europe and were unresponsive to their pleas. It is also a rebuttal to the further accusation that if they had only spoken out, `the slaughterer would not have succeeded in his task' ''. Indeed, it does offer a measure of consolation that American rabbis representing American Jewry as spiritual leaders did not keep silent, raising their agonizing voices when their European brethren were being slaughtered on mass in ``civilized'' Christian Europe. Not to have spoken would have constituted not only a sin of omission but also one of commission. However, what remains disturbing and perhaps sinful if not unpardonable, is that the well-intentioned pulpit messages of swelling pain could not stop the vast tragedy from unfolding into the destruction of no less than two thirds of European Jewry and one third of world Jewry. America, however, was silent to our bitter cry for help, which was denied and delayed, rendering it mere words blowing in the wind as if unspoken. We, who have elevated language to divine heights, discovered that Hitler's hateful rhetoric proved more persuasive. The voluminous pulpit sermons serve to glaringly highlight the inability to translate them into concrete action to save fellow Jews, so many, and they relied on us. The failure of rabbinic preaching in the absence of a corresponding successful political campaign to arouse American leaders and particularly FDR toward redemptive action as our people went up in smoke, cannot be eradicated from our collective consciousness and guilty conscience, nor from American colossal failure to stand by basic morality when assailed by barbaric forces aimed at subverting and uprooting the Judeo-Christian heritage of shared humane values that Nazism declared, with good reason, adversarial to Hitler's new ``Chosen People'' and ``Aryan Commandments.'' Rabbi Stephen S. Wise's lobbying efforts before FDR, his trusted ``friend'', and some organized mass rallies and appeals proved futile even as the Allies were aware of the ``Final Solution'' being actualized. While American anti- Semitism, anti-immigration/refugees and isolationism reigned and presented FDR with tough challenges, he failed to assert Presidential moral leadership allowing us to undergo a crippling genocide, threatening the future Jewish potential and even survivability. No less than a million and a half Jewish children perished in the Shoah. The SS St. Louis with its human cargo of mostly 937 Jewish passengers, including children, sailing from Hamburg, Germany, was turned away and back from these shores in May 1939 with disastrous consequences. The State Department rejected an opportunity to save 1,000 children, arguing that they would become Jewish adults. Bombing the railroads leading to Auschwitz was deemed by FDR a diversion from fighting Nazi Germany even while the Allies, including American planes, were bombing chemical installations nearby. Davis S. Wyman's monumental classic, ``The Abandonment of the Jews,'' (what an apt and shaking title) is a must-read. The New York Times, under Jewish ownership, buried Holocaust events in its back pages. There is a sense of a high conspiracy early on if not to deny the Holocaust, to diminish it. Saperstein's book corresponds with the world-wide dangerous resurgence of anti-Semitism's alarming specter. It has opened a much-appreciated window to revisiting the costly shortcomings of response, Jewish verbal and American political, in our darkest times, along with hopefully, though not guaranteed, learning from them. The late incomparable Elie Wiesel wrote of his profound disappointment, along with other survivors, that the world failed to learn from the Holocaust given the genocides that followed. The organized American Jewish community is far more effective than it was before WWII, though there are even now limits to its power and influence, always begrudged and enlarged by our detractors. Dare we remember that in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, white supremacists marched Nazi-like without bothering to cover their heads with hoods, shouting, ``Jews will not replace us.'' Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue was the scene in 2018 of the worst crime against Jews committed on American soil with 11 Jewish worshipers murdered on Shabbat. The Gaza War following the October 7, 2023, ghastly Hamas attack triggered antisemitism on American campuses. The massacre at Bondi Beach, Australia, during the Festival of Chanukah, painfully attests that no place anywhere is safe. The dreadful ``Auschwitz'' does not shockingly resonate to an American public's large segment only seventy some years following such grave historical events, despite multiple Holocaust Museums. Holocaust education and world history are essential tools in the never-ending struggle against forgetfulness, ignorance, and prejudice with new genocides rising, each unique and the same. Democracy, any democracy, is but a fragile institution as we witnessed, and its essential safeguards are demanding. The State of Israel, the world's only sovereign Jewish country, built on the Holocaust's ashes, has become a target for those attacking us when powerless and now resenting a measure of Jewish defensive power that we were so tragically lacking when abandoned by the world. Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman is founder and spiritual leader of Temple Lev Tikvah as well as Honorary Senior Rabbi Scholar at Eastern Shore Chapel Episcopal Church, both in Virginia Beach. His Polish family lost hundreds of members during the Holocaust. He spent his early childhood among Jewish refugees in Kazakhstan, where he was born in 1945, Poland, Austria and Germany before moving to Israel in 1949. ____________________