Mr. Prime Minister, Chairman Wiesel, survivors and educators, distinguished guests:
For the past several years, I have had the privilege of working, under the direction of President Clinton and Secretary of State Albright, to help complete the unfinished business of the Holocaust era. With the participation and constant support of many of the governments represented here today, we have been trying to bring some measure of justice to surviving victims, by recovering personal and communal property that was stolen from them, by enforcing their rights under insurance contracts, and by compensating them for slave and forced labor and other wrongs inflicted by the Nazi regime. As an outgrowth of these initiatives, an increasing number of nations has appointed official commissions - now more than a dozen - to examine the role their governments played during the Second World War and make public accounting.

These activities have served as a catalyst for countries that have not focused intensely on Holocaust education to do so now, and for those which have developed extensive education and remembrance efforts to pursue them with renewed vigor. The survivors and educators who have just spoken present us with a powerful challenge: to make the Holocaust, with all of its horror and complexities, part of the personal knowledge of students and of all our citizens, not just in our time but for all time.

The need is clear. We teach science and language and the arts in our schools, but we do not do enough to instill the basic elements of tolerance and fairness young people need to make the moral judgments necessary for active citizenship. We have entered a century in which education about everything will be instantly available to everyone, but we still find it hard to break down national and cultural stereotypes and to convince our citizens of the common humanity that underlines differences in religion and race. If that were not the case, we would not have had the Rwandas and the Kosovos.

Teaching the Holocaust can fill these gaps. One reason that the Holocaust continues to have such resonance, fifty-five years after the discovery of the death camps, is because it raises eternal questions about human behavior: Why do people hate? How can they remain indifferent in the presence of evil? What is courage? How can we engender respect for human dignity? What can be done to prevent such horror from happening again?
If, by learning the events and consequences of Hitler’s Final Solution, we can take steps to begin to solve the age old problems of hatred, destruction and war, then, at last, the sacrifice and suffering of the victims will not be entirely in vain.

The United States has been active in the area of Holocaust education, remembrance and research. From the highest levels of our government, we are deeply convinced of the importance of this task, as President Clinton indicated by his video presentation. Although our educational system is highly decentralized, fifteen of our States, with a population of millions of students, either require or provide for Holocaust courses in the public schools. Eighty Holocaust centers or museums provide teacher-training programs. Ten states have legislatively created Holocaust Commissions or Councils involved in the teaching of the Holocaust. At this Conference, I am pleased that we have on our delegation three Ambassadors, representatives of our state education commissions, our Holocaust Memorial Museum director and a number of leading NGOs. My government’s commitment to support these programs is rock solid and enduring. We take this as a solemn duty, and we will work to strengthen existing Holocaust education efforts and encourage new ones to be undertaken.

The success of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, with its 14 million visitors in just seven years, stands as proof that history can be taught, with all its ramifications, in a way that grips audiences, young and old, and shapes their thinking. The Education Division of that museum has assumed a leadership role in teaching the Holocaust, in creating educational materials, and in offering a wide variety of professional development programs for educators who come in from all over the country and, increasingly, all over the world. The individual acts of heroism contained in the oral histories of survivors, recorded by the Shoah Foundation and other institutions, are an inspiration to each of us in our own lives.
To protect our civilization, we must expunge from our societies any tolerance of racism, anti-Semitism, ethnic cleansing, xenophobia or Nazism. People espousing such views must know with certitude that they will find no sympathy from our governments and that their message will be fought with fervor in our schools, houses of worship and social organizations and by our governments.

Teachers, from our universities and urban centers to the remote corners of our nations must know that we, their national leaders, encourage them, need them, to present this difficult subject matter, whether or not, indeed, perhaps especially if, the perpetrators, victims or bystanders were their grandparents, parents or neighbors. In a sense, our future is in your hands as educators as much as in those of government leaders. We need you to teach the difficult past in order to spare our children and their children a difficult future. We government representatives are here to pledge to you our support in your efforts and to encourage you to press forward. Do so for the sake of those who perished, and for generations to come.

And let me be very frank -- because this must be a place for frankness -- education and memory require openness of archives. Fifty-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz, there are still archives that are inaccessible. There is no excuse for any country or any institution not fully declassifying their archives and their documentation. (applause) If we talk about indifference and acquiescence, how can we tolerate continued secrecy and obscuring of documents that will shed continued important light on the events we are here to look at. The United States Government has created an inter-agency working group on declassification of Nazi-era documents. We have declassified over a million pages with more still to come. This must be part of the Stockholm Declaration. Teachers must also stress as we have heard today from others that there are choices. Individuals made those choices - whether a Sugihara or Wallenberg. But countries did as well. The Bulgarians, for example, protected their entire Jewish community and deserve to be recognized. No country can feel that it acted properly.

The United States during the war years took in fewer refugees than did Switzerland. We all bear responsibility.

If we can work together to accomplish these ambitious educational goals, we shall be in obedience to the Biblical injunction that the Swedish Living History project has used as its watchword:

“Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children after another generation.”

Thank you.