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CNN Live Event/Special

CNN Airs "Never Again: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, A Tour With Wolf Blitzer." Aired 11p-12a ET

Aired August 26, 2022 - 23:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[23:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Never again. That is the plea of the people who survived one of the darkest moments in history, the holocaust. During World War II, German Nazis murdered countless people, including six million Jewish men, women, and children. It's easy to think of the holocaust as a relic of the past, but the few remaining survivors of the holocaust still lived with the horrors.

The holocaust remains one of the greatest crimes against humanity. In Europe, Nazis set out to kill as many Jews as possible. They murdered all four of my grandparents, and forced my parents into slave labor and extermination camps. Miraculously, my parents survived.

Hate ignited the holocaust. Ignorance fueled it. Eight decades later, it's horrifying to see a rise in antisemitism and holocaust denial around the world and here in this country.

We want to take you on a tour of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here in Washington, D.C. More than 45 million people have visited this museum since it opened back in 1993. This institution serves as a reminder of what happens when society doesn't up to hate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNKNOWN (voice-over): Now, sir, can we begin? Would you tell me your full name?

DAVID BLITZER, HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR, FATHER OF WOLF BLITZER: David Blitzer, B-L-I-T-Z-E-R.

W. BLITZER: That's my dad, David Blitzer. He survived the holocaust, met my mother, another survivor, and they got married and came to America after World War II. He recorded his very personal and very powerful survival story for future generations.

D. BLITZER (voice-over): I'm originally from Oswiecim, which is actually the name of the city of Auschwitz before the war. My wife did not believe that she's going to be able to have children after the concentration camp. But 10 months after we were married, she would.

W. BLITZER: Like so many survivors, he knew he had to speak for the millions who couldn't. And now, I'm carrying on his legacy. I'm going to take you through the history of the holocaust in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum with help from survivors like my father. Their voices will bear witness to future generations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

W. BLITZER: Our tour guide is Sara Bloomfield, the director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Hi, Sara.

SARA BLOOMFIELD, DIRECTOR, U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM: Hey.

W. BLITZER: Sara, tell us about this elevator.

BLOOMFIELD: This elevator brings the American public into the holocaust through the eyes of the ordinary American GI, who is fighting to defeat Nazism in the World War II. And it is those American soldiers who are the first eyewitnesses to the holocaust. And you hear this GI coming across these atrocities and asking, how could human beings do this to one another?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD SEIBEL, COLONEL, UNITED STATES ARMY (voice-over): The leader called in by radio and said that we have come across something. We are not sure what it is. It's a big prison of some kind. And there are people running all over. Sick, dying, starved people. You cannot imagine it. Things like that don't happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[23:05:00]

W. BLITZER: Sara, tell us about this photo.

BLOOMFIELD: Here you see American soldiers who have been obviously courageously fighting their way across Europe to liberate it from Nazism. And they stumble on concentration camps like this in Germany. And they've heard about these crimes.

But now, they are seeing them for the first time. They're absolutely stunned. And they're witnesses. They're standing around trying to absorb the inhumanity of it all. And we want our visitors to also be witnesses to this inhumanity.

W. BLITZER: When people come to this museum, they see a quote from Dwight Eisenhower right at the beginning. Tell us about that.

BLOOMFIELD: Well, General Eisenhower, who is leading the military effort to defeat Nazism, he has been reading intelligence report. He has been reading for years about the German crimes. But they're so extreme that he feels they can't all be true.

And so, he says, once they're occupying these camps, I want to go see one for myself because I can't believe what I've been reading. And it is even far worse than those reports he read. And he predicts that at some point, people will not believe the truth of these crimes, and indeed we witness holocaust denial today.

W. BLITZER: When people come to this museum, they start the tour on this floor.

BLOOMFIELD: Right. They start here through America's first direct encounter with the history, which is the witnessing of the crimes.

And through our soldiers, these young men from across the country fighting to defeat Nazism and understanding that they are fighting something much greater than a war, this is really about human dignity and human freedom, as you see in this photo.

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[23:10:00]

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W. BLITZER: The Nazi party rose to prominence in the 1920s. Adolph Hitler became its leader in 1921. The party was small, a fringe group on the radical right with little political power. But by 1932, the Nazis had become the largest political party in the German parliament.

And less than a year later, Germany's democratically-elected president appointed Hitler chancellor, and he embarked on his quest for so called racial purity, looking to conquer Europe in the name of the Arian race. The Nazis wanted to rid Europe of groups they deemed inferior and blamed for Germany's problems.

The Jews were the focus of the Nazi's horrific push for purity. But the Nazi's hateful ideology extended to other groups such as the Roma, people with disabilities, Pols, Russians, communists, Jehovah's witnesses, homosexuals. The list goes on and on.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNKNOWN: Adolf Hitler!

ADOLF HITLER, GERMAN DICTATOR AND LEADER OF NAZI PARTY (on screen translation): People often say, okay the Fuhrer, that's one thing. But the party, that's another matter. No gentlemen. The Fuhrer is the party and the party is the Fuhrer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

W. BLITZER: Sara, what did the west do to try to stop the rise of Hitler?

BLOOMFIELD: The west did very little, actually. Everything that was going on in Nazi Germany was widely reported in the American papers. But it is important to understand the west had just came out of World War I. The west was very isolationist, didn't want to fight another war. Then there was a great depression. They were battling economic challenges.

So, wishful thinking, they thought this might go away. Of course, they were tragically very wrong.

W. BLITZER: Hitler often said he was the party and the party was him, and his power became absolute.

BLOOMFIELD: Right. He comes to power through a democratic process. The conservative elites make a deal with him. There is a lot of things about him they think are too extreme, but they think they're going to control him. And they woefully underestimate him because he's able to destroy German democracy very quickly after he comes into power and creates a dictatorship.

W. BLITZER: You know, it is so, so scary when you think about his rise to power through democratic means. And then within a few years, it's absolute and he's slaughtering all these people, and everybody in Germany, almost everyone, was going along with it. It is heartbreaking to even think about that, the way he managed to do that.

BLOOMFIELD: With a lot of collaborators.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

D. BLITZER (voice-over): I never saw and I never heard a German who should regret that Hitler is at power. Only when they started to lose the war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

W. BLITZER: My family lived in Poland when Germany invaded in 1939, beginning of the European phase of World War II. The Nazis began executions almost immediately, from Polish political leaders to entire Jewish families. They erased signs of Jewish life and culture, the genesis of a genocide. They even erased the names of Polish-Jew cities, and as my father said, used them for their own terrible purposes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

D. BLITZER (voice-over): Auschwitz is not the real name. The Germans germanized it to Auschwitz. Actually, the name was Oswiecim. It was a very nice, beautiful little city. Had a lot of synagogues, Hasidic people, organizational people, intellectual people, and everything that you can think of.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

W. BLITZER: What is this all about? Because we see the names of all these towns.

BLOOMFIELD: On this glass bridge, you see etched the names of just a few of the thousands of Jewish communities across Europe that were destroyed.

[23:15:01]

These were communities where Jews have lived for hundreds of years, and they're basically obliterated overnight.

W. BLITZER: I saw the name of my mother's hometown in Poland, Suchedniow. I was thinking of my mom. How -- she was such a strong woman. During the war, she survived, and she helped her two brothers and younger sister survived. When they came to Buffalo, New York, she really built a home and life. It just brings back so many memories.

BLOOMFIELD: Survival was really a remarkable story, especially your mom in Poland, where over 90% of the Jews were killed. So, really, it is extraordinary that she managed to survive this.

W. BLITZER: There were three million Jews in Poland before the war and not that many survived. I was walking around this museum, and I see pictures of the corpses, the bodies. I think of my grandparents who were slaughtered at the death camps. It is just heartbreaking. When people walk down this bridge over here, what do you want them to think?

BLOOMFIELD: Well, we're trying to give people a sense of the scope of the holocaust. The numbers are so large, so we're talking thousands of communities and we're talking millions of people. The Nazis set out to murder every Jew in Europe. They had lists estimating there were 11 million from Ireland to Turkey. They were going to kill them all. They eventually killed six million.

W. BLITZER: That is just heartbreaking to think about those numbers. But to think that each one of those numbers is a man, a woman, or a child that was so brutally slaughtered, for what?

BLOOMFIELD: Exactly. These are not statistics. These are individual lives just like your parents and, of course, your grandparents. This is about families and people with a whole future before them.

W. BLITZER: This was just one town.

BLOOMFIELD: Just one town. Here you see the pre-war lives of one Jewish community. Grandparents, children, friends, neighbors, just people leading their normal lives. This community was destroyed in two days in September 1941 by mobile-killing units. You know, you look at these faces and you just -- it reminds you that the unthinkable is possible. Hundreds of years completely obliterated in just two days.

W. BLITZER: And these pictures tell the story not just of this town but you can expand it throughout Europe. These are little towns where the Jews lived for hundreds and hundreds of years.

BLOOMFIELD: This very sad story is played out in thousands of Jewish communities across German-dominated Europe.

W. BLITZER: I see these little kids. What did they do to deserve death?

BLOOMFIELD: It shows the true magnitude of a loss, which is the children are about the future. And that was the Nazi goal, to destroy any Jewish future.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [23:20:00]

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W. BLITZER: Before Hitler's so-called final solution to rid Europe of Jews was implemented, the Nazis established ghettos in areas under German control. You can see it right here he. The museum lines this exhibit with cobblestones actually taken from the Warsaw camp. More than 400,000 Jews lived in just over one square mile in Warsaw, controlled and confined, but many Jews tried to resist.

In the Krakow ghetto, this shattered glass serves as a memory of the shattered lives as the Nazis put their final extermination plan into motion.

BLOOMFIELD: So, when the Germans decided that they're going to murder every Jew in Europe, they do it through a system of deporting Jews across Europe to stationary killing centers located in occupied Poland. So, Jews would be deported in a railroad car like this, dozens of people, anywhere from one to three days, no food, no water, no sanitation. Many, of course, died along the way. But if they lived, their destination would be a killing center, where most of them were gassed upon arrival.

Some have heard rumors. But again, remember, it was just unbelievable. So, what they understood and what they were told by the Germans was that they were being deported to the east for hard labor. People always want to think the best, especially in a horrible situation like this. So, they wanted to believe that there might be something at the end. They couldn't imagine gas chambers.

W. BLITZER: And when the people got off these rail cars, they were separated.

BLOOMFIELD: The men were separated from the women and children. The men were often put to work. This was forced labor. The idea would be they were just be worked to death, and the women and the children would be gassed immediately.

W. BLITZER: They would be taken to the gas chambers?

BLOOMFIELD: Right, and someone is making decisions like that as people get off the trains.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

D. BLITZER (voice-over): The biggest puzzle for me is that they did not bombard the railroad leading to the crematoriums. We saw airplanes bombarding cities. We were laughing. We were happy. We were praying to God that we get killed from those bombs. We couldn't understand why don't they bombard?

Every day, thousands of people were burned and gassed in camps only because they had the possibility to bring those train loads of people. If those rails would have been bombarded, they couldn't have done it so perfectly. [23:25:00]

That's all I can tell you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

W. BLITZER: Arbeit macht frei. Work will make you free. That is the sign. The first thing you see when you arrive at Auswitch, and I've been there, the first thing you see is arbeit macht frei.

BLOOMFIELD: Yes, you could see this today at the camp, which is a historical site. But for the victims, they would have seen this as well. Gotten off these trains with this horrible deportation ride. And then this false promise that you are here to work. Of course, that was totally a deception. But this was intended to be maybe somewhat reassuring. You are here to work.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEO SCHNEIDERMAN, SURVIVOR (voice-over): We saw that sign, that arbeit macht frei. It means freedom through labor. I said, don't make any mistakes. Nobody needs your labor here. You did not come here to work. You came here to be killed.

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[23:29:58]

BLOOMFIELD: We're here at the section of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and you see here a barracks from Auschwitz, of course, the most infamous killing center. So, most people upon arrival in Auschwitz would be gassed to death. But those who weren't gassed would be living in barracks like this under, again, terrible, terrible conditions.

Lots of overcrowding. They're in these bunk beds where they're all squeezed together. There are no mattresses. There are no pillows. Nothing like -- they're lucky if they have a little bit of straw. Very nigger food. And they're being worked to death. Of course, most of them are going to be killed. And this is the beginning -- this is industrialized killing. That's what happens at Auschwitz.

W. BLITZER: Because more than a million Jews were killed at Auschwitz, right?

BLOOMFIELD: And thousands of Pols, of Roma, and Soviet prisoners of war also killed at Auschwitz. At its height, Auschwitz is gassing up to maybe 6,000 people a day. So, sometimes, the Jews -- we have pictures of them actually seated in certain parts of the camp where they are waiting. They think they're waiting to be processed. Of course, we know they were waiting to be gassed.

W. BLITZER: There were other horrible things going on at Auschwitz as well.

BLOOMFIELD: Yes. Auschwitz really is a complex of dozens of camps. It is a killing center. It is concentration camps. There are forced labor. So, this is a whole system of Nazi ideology where they're going to destroy their racial enemies and work their other enemies to death.

W. BLITZER: And I understand you discovered not far from Auschwitz some sort of Nazi SS vacation location.

BLOOMFIELD: Yes. They built a retreat about nine miles from Auschwitz for the SS to go like on their days off. So, they would be here at Auschwitz gassing up to 6,000 a day, and then take a break, men and women because there were women who were working in telecommunications at these camps. And they would do things like sing-alongs and blueberry pickings at this retreat center.

W. BLITZER: If you visit the location of Auschwitz today, they recreated, they have allowed to remain many, many of the worst aspects of that death camp.

BLOOMFIELD: It's when you see it, you appreciate the scale of Auschwitz, the sheer size of it. Again, when you think about the industrial nature, it is like an assembly line. Think they got it down to about a penny a body in German funds at the time. It is really extraordinarily efficient, and that's what they are proud of.

W. BLITZER: Is there a lesson about Auschwitz you want to share?

BLOOMFIELD: Well, other than the sheer evil and inhumanity of it, it is really a harsh reminder that technological progress is not moral progress.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

D. BLITZER (voice-over): And I saw the end, that the end is coming in Buchenwald. Because when I arrived in Buchenwald, I saw outside lying dozens upon dozens upon dozens of dead bodies laid out like in a forest route, and I thought I got to get out from over here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

W. BLITZER: Sara, tell us about this exhibit over here. These are shoes, old shoes.

BLOOMFIELD: This is one of our most iconic exhibits. If you visit these killing centers today, you see thousands upon thousands of shoes like this, the shoes of the victims. The Germans took their shoes because they were going to reuse them and recycle them, if you will. But, of course, the victims would be killed, but this is what is left of those lives.

W. BLITZER: These shoes are 80, 90 years old, and they're here, the only surviving elements for all those people who were exterminated.

BLOOMFIELD: This is the trace of the people before they were gassed.

W. BLITZER: I think of those shoes. You know, my four grandparents, we didn't have anything. Nothing was found, basically. It is just horrendous, horrendous situation. It's so important, so timely now to remind people who don't know anything about it.

BLOOMFIELD: I think one of the most important lessons over the holocaust is that the world always changes, but human nature never does.

W. BLITZER: This is a reminder of that.

BLOOMFIELD: Yes, a harsh reminder, but we need to be reminded of it anew, every generation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RITA KESSELMAN, SURVIVOR (voice-over): In three days, they took 10,000 people to Auschwitz. They made us march to the train station. They said I was to work there. I don't know.

[23:35:00]

(INAUDIBLE) with babies and old people all on the road. We saw little babies left behind because people (INAUDIBLE). We saw little babies sitting and crying, old people sitting and crying. Some were shot right there on the march.

ESTELLE LAUGHLIN, SURVIVOR (voice-over): (INAUDIBLE) electrified barbed wire fences marked the end of our lives. And in front of us was the crematory and the chimneys and the smoke and the stench of human flesh. My father was gassed there.

IRENE SALOMONAWICZ, SURVIVOR: We were like frightened animals in a cage. This is what we were, caged animals.

I didn't feel like living anymore when we went in the concentration camp and the allies were bombing. I prayed to God that the bomb should come and get us because we were so sick of living. (END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVEN FENVES, SURVIVOR: My name is Steven Fenves, I'm 90 years old, and I survived the holocaust.

W. BLITZER: Steven was just a boy during the holocaust, living in what was then Yugoslavia. Nazis rounded up his family and shipped them to Auschwitz in a cramped train.

FENVES: We didn't know where we were going. We didn't know where we had arrived. When the doors were stand open, we were greeted with a noise and the stench, particularly a stench which even today is in my nostrils, stench from the smoke of the crematorium, stench from the humans around you, unwashed, unchanged clothes, excrement and urine sticking to your clothes and your body because you were out allowed from the train once a day. That was an overwhelming scent.

The only image I can compare it to is the stockyards in Chicago and Kansas City where thousands of animals were stockpiled until further disposition. In Auschwitz, thousands and thousands of recently arrived enslaved people were stockpiled in these compounds. Three tiers of cots.

We fought ourselves to the top bunk so that we wouldn't get the shower of urine from the people above us. When our strength was no longer enough to fight our way, we were together in a lower bunk. And so, we were all dying, simply dying.

Walking close, no longer eating, no longer recognizing the surrounding, walking around aimlessly, decrepit to the point where some morning, they were simply carted away with the dead of the night directly to the crematorium.

Every indication I have, this is how my mother died. I was there five months. One feeding a day. You didn't have any utensils. There were some common cups. So, you had to wait until somebody used that cup and then you took it, obviously unwashed, nothing ever gets washed, and you sat in the dirt and waited to die.

I deliberately speak about events rather than feelings. I worked hard in the camp and afterwards to suppress feelings because it was easier to survive that way. There are things I regret that I couldn't do. I have the guilt feeling that many survivors have that why I, why not my mother, why my father had to die so painfully.

But maybe it's strange. Maybe it's a selfish thing to say. But occasionally, I feel a certain pride for not just for having survived but for having been instrumental in other people surviving.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

W. BLITZER: It's impossible to hear a story like that 80 years later and not feel angry that the world looked the other way.

[23:40:01]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNKNOWN (voice-over): During the war, did you think that the allies knew what the Germans were doing to the Jews? Do you think that they knew?

D. BLITZER (voice-over): We knew that they knew, know. But maybe they were thinking that that's being exaggerated. There's no question in my mind that they knew.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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HARRY TRUMAN, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This is a solemn but glorious hour. General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations. The flags of freedom fly all over Europe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

W. BLITZER: Allied victory in World War II, of course, came too late for millions of people. The Nazis war on the Jews have been going on for years before the U.S. officially entered the war, and that raises the question, what did Americans know and when did they know it?

REBECCA ERBELDING, HISTORIAN, U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM: Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in January 1933. Weeks later, Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated as president of the United States.

[23:45:00]

Now, the great depression had been going on for four years at this point. And in the United States, about 25% of the workforce was still unemployed.

There is quite a lot of information in the United States about the new Nazi party and as it's coming to power in Germany, and Adolf Hitler. There are headline news across the country of Jews being kicked out of their jobs, of Jewish businesses being boycotted, books being burned, kids being kicked out of public school.

And that is sitting right next to headline news about the new deal, and there's actually a huge public outcry about what people are reading is happening. But the Roosevelt administration decides, we have enough problems domestically, we are not going to get involved in anything overseas.

So, in May 1940, even after Nazi Germany has invaded France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, 93% of Americans still think that we should not get proactively involved in any sort of war. Many Americans think one World War I had been a mistake. That we have gone overseas, thousands of boys have died, and nothing happened.

The United States government learned about the crimes that we now call the holocaust today in drips. And I think it takes the United States a very uncomfortably long time to figure out what is happening. It is a failure of imagination. It's a failure of belief. They didn't think that a country that was at war would be expanding resources towards trying to kill innocent people.

W. BLITZER: But when U.S. officials finally did understand what was happening, they spoke out.

ERBELDING: The State Department, working with the British and working with the Soviets and the nations in exile in London, said, there's nothing we can do about this, but we kind of need people to stop asking.

And so, we will put out a statement, and we will put out a statement saying, we condemn the cold-blooded extermination, we say it's happening, we condemn it, and we are going to punish the perpetrators after the war. So, they don't promise any sort of rescue, they promised post-war punishment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) FENVES: December 17, 1942, a statement by the allies. The above- mentioned governments and the French National Committee condemn in the strongest possible terms the bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination. They declare that such events can only strengthen the resolve of all freedom-loving people in overthrowing the barbarous Hitlerite tyranny. They re-affirm their solemn resolution to ensure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution, and to press on with the necessary practical measures to this end.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ERBELDING: Americans were pulled in April 1938. And a majority of Americans thought that the persecution of Jews was at least partially their own fault. That they controlled the media or they controlled banks. And that's why Germany had to do this to them. Of course, we know that that's just anti-Semitism.

W. BLITZER: One example of how Jews fleeing early in the holocaust weren't met with open arms was the 1939 case of the German ship, the St. Louis. Nearly all of the 937 passengers onboard were Jewish refugees. But Cuba refused to allow the ship to land. And even with the lights of Miami in their sights, the refugees were unable to disembark in Florida. The St. Louis was forced to return to Europe. More than 250 who had been onboard the ship were killed in the holocaust.

ERBELDING: I think there is a tendency to look back at the 1930s and 1940s and say, I don't understand why we didn't do more. You know, it is so clear these people needed to get out, and we should have been the country to welcome them.

And then we look in our newspapers and look in the magazines and watch TV today and say, oh, it is so complicated now. And I think the more you learn about American responses to the holocaust and the more you learn about this time period, you realize what was really complicated then, and the people who are opposing immigration then had very similar arguments as you hear today.

I think it is incredibly important to educate young people about the holocaust. Young people are the future leaders of this country. They are the ones who need to carry this lesson forward. Holocaust survivors talk all the time about how they were witnesses for their families and how learning their stories allows us to bear witness for future generations, too.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EME QUIOCO, USHMM FELLOW HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT: For the dead and the living, we must bear witness. I honestly wasn't the most knowledgeable about holocaust history. We knew basic things like what concentration camps were or a lot of Jewish people died.

And I hate to use the word "a lot" because it is so simple, and I think it takes away from the people who really did die and it takes away from how many people died, which I don't think I was able to wrap my head around. [23:50:07]

I did not know the full extent of the history, and I think that really bothered me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

W. BLITZER: Sadly, there is a worry that the horrible details of the holocaust could be forgotten, or in the case of younger generations, never even learned. Less than half of U.S. states require holocaust education in secondary schools.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUIOCO: There is a lot that we don't want to talk about because it's a really dark side of our history. Kids my age need to learn about this history whether it makes them feel uncomfortable or not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FENVES: When I speak, particularly to school-aged children, I warn them that any form of prejudice, discrimination can be whipped up by people intent on whipping it up to mass hatred, resulting eventually in genocides and the holocaust.

That sense of hatred, specifically Jew hatred, I don't use like intellectual term anti-Semitism. Most of the people who hate Jews hate Jews and don't know what the word is. They just got hate.

That unfortunately arises in every country, every civilization. There is a distinction between us and them. The name of us is different. The name of them is different. But the "us" always fear "them" driving them out. As people in Charlottesville announced, Jews will not replace us. Movements start to put them back in the place where they should be, as sub-humans as unworthy of any human dignity, and eventually to extermination.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUIOCO: Half of my family is from Afghanistan and the other half is from the Philippines. So, I don't have that personal connection necessarily. For a lot of kids like me, it can be easy to question, why does this matter, it doesn't relate to me, it's not my history to tell.

But when we sit here and think about what affects me and living in your own world and only thinking about yourself, it doesn't create a world that I would want to live in. You speak out because some people don't have that option.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FENVES: As a survivor, I have an obligation to speak on behalf of those who didn't survive. So, I see myself as a messenger in which I hope some people recognize themselves and wonder what they could have done in the same situation. People have largely forgotten the holocaust. Yes, I worry that that's going to further deteriorate and pass the threshold of people's memory.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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[23:55:00]

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

D. BLITZER: We are liberated. I said to him, how do you know? He said when we opened up the door, he heard talking French. Now, what do we do now? What do we do now?

UNKNOWN (voice-over): How would you like future generations to remember the holocaust?

D. BLITZER: The future generations to remember that the holocaust, everything which was written, what people are telling you is the truth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

W. BLITZER: My dad recorded that video back in 1995. But even back then, he knew that this history would be challenged. He knew how important it was to pass down his story. My dad used to always tell me, every time he would see me on TV, it was his best revenge against Hitler.

As the child of holocaust survivors, I see myself as a living link to this history, a conduit for my parents who have now both passed on. May they rest in peace. And as we say in Hebrew, may their memories be a blessing. And as long as I'm here, their legacy lives on.

But it can't just be me and those like me. This poem at the end of the museum tour reminds us of that. First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

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FENVES: For the dead and the living, we must bear witness. That has been my motto. I'm not speaking about myself. I'm speaking as a representative of my parents, my grandmother, my cousins who have died, my schoolmates. They are unable to speak. It is my responsibility to speak on their behalf.

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W. BLITZER: The tour begins with a cramped elevator ride into the dark corridors of the Nazi's rise to power. But it ends with a striking room, the hall of remembrance. A place for people to sit, to reflect, and to remember.

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W. BLITZER: To remember the witnesses, to remember their stories, remember them like I remember my mom and my dad every single day.