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from https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/05/annotated-biden-speech-holocaust-memorial-dg/

Biden’s speech at the Holocaust remembrance ceremony, annotated
By Zachary B. Wolf and Annette Choi, CNN

Published May 7, 2024

President Joe Biden talked about the documented increase of antisemitism
in the United States during the annual US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s
Days of Remembrance ceremony at the US Capitol building. Every recent
president has made remarks at least once at the event, but Biden’s
remarks came as pro-Palestinian protests have disrupted classes and commencements at multiple US universities. At times, rhetoric at those
protests has veered into antisemitism, offended Jewish students and
sparked a fierce debate about free speech.

Biden talked in-depth about the Hamas terror attack against Israel on
October 7, 2023, and the Israeli hostages that remain in captivity. He
did not mention Israel’s heavy-handed response, which has not only
destroyed much of Gaza and cost tens of thousands of lives but has also
driven a wedge between Biden and many progressives, particularly on
college campuses. See below for what he said, along with context from CNN.

Remarks as delivered
Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you, Stu Eizenstat,
for that introduction, for your leadership of the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum. You are a true scholar and statesman and a
dear friend.

Speaker Johnson, Leader Jeffries, members of Congress and especially the survivors of the Holocaust. If my mother were here, she’d look at you
and say, “God love you all. God love you all.”

Abe Foxman and all other survivors who embody absolute courage and
dignity and grace are here as well.

During these sacred days of remembrance we grieve, we give voice to the
6 million Jews who were systematically targeted and murdered by the
Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. We honor the memory
of victims, the pain of survivors, the bravery of heroes who stood up to Hitler's unspeakable evil. And we recommit to heading and heeding the
lessons that one of the darkest chapters in human history to revitalize
and realize the responsibility of never again.

The Days of Remembrance commemoration has been an annual event since
1982. Every US president since Bill Clinton has spoken at least once at
a remembrance event.

House Speaker Mike Johnson spoke shortly before Biden and tried to
compare the situation on college campuses today with that on college
campuses in Germany in the 1930s.

Never again, simply translated for me, means never forget, never forget.
Never forgetting means we must must keep telling the story, we must keep teaching the truth, we must keep teaching our children and our
grandchildren. And the truth is we are at risk of people not knowing the
truth.

That's why, growing up, my dad taught me and my siblings about the
horrors of the Shoah at our family dinner table.

Shoah is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust.

That's why I visited Yad Vashem with my family as a senator, as vice
president and as president. And that's why I took my grandchildren to
Dachau, so they could see and bear witness to the perils of
indifference, the complicity of silence in the face of evil that they
knew was happening.

Biden visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust remembrance site, in 2022
as president.

As vice president, he toured the Nazi concentration camp outside Munich
in 2015 with his granddaughter during a trip for an annual security
conference.

Germany, 1933, Hitler and his Nazi party rise to power by rekindling one
of the world's oldest forms of prejudice and hate — antisemitism.

His rule didn't begin with mass murder. It started slowly across
economic, political, social and cultural life — propaganda demonizing
Jews, boycotts of Jewish businesses, synagogues defaced with swastikas, harassment of Jews in the street and in the schools, antisemitic demonstrations, pogroms, organized riots.

With the indifference of the world, Hitler knew he could expand his
reign of terror by eliminating Jews from Germany, to annihilate Jews
across Europe through genocide the Nazis called the final solution. Concentration camps, gas chambers, mass shootings. By the time the war
ended, 6 million Jews, one out of every three Jews in the entire world,
were murdered.

This ancient hatred of Jews didn't begin with the Holocaust. It didn't
end with the Holocaust either, or after, even after our victory in World
War II. This hatred continues to lie deep in the hearts of too many
people in the world and requires our continued vigilance and outspokenness.

The Holocaust survivor Irene Butter wrote for CNN Opinion in 2021 about
Adolf Hitler’s rise and echoes of Nazism in the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

That hatred was brought to life on October 7th in 2023. On the sacred
Jewish holiday, the terrorist group Hamas unleashed the deadliest day of
the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Read more about Hamas.

Driven by ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people off the face of
the Earth, over 1,200 innocent people — babies, parents, grandparents — slaughtered in their kibbutz, massacred at a music festival, brutally
raped, mutilated and sexually assaulted.

Evidence of sexual violence has been documented. Here’s the account of
one Israeli woman who has spoken publicly about her experience.

Thousands more carrying wounds, bullets and shrapnel from the memory of
that terrible day they endured. Hundreds taken hostage, including
survivors of the Shoah.

Now here we are, not 75 years later but just seven-and-a-half months
later and people are already forgetting, are already forgetting that
Hamas unleashed this terror. That it was Hamas that brutalized Israelis.
It was Hamas who took and continues to hold hostages. I have not
forgotten, nor have you, and we will not forget.

On May 7, 1945, the German High Command agreed to an unconditional
surrender in World War II, 79 years ago.

And as Jews around the world still cope with the atrocities and trauma
of that day and its aftermath, we've seen a ferocious surge of
antisemitism in America and around the world.

In late October, FBI Director Christopher Wray said reports of
antisemitism in the US were reaching “historic” levels.

Vicious propaganda on social media, Jews forced to keep their — hide
their kippahs under baseball hats, tuck their Jewish stars into their
shirts.

On college campuses, Jewish students blocked, harassed, attacked while
walking to class. Antisemitism, antisemitic posters, slogans calling for
the annihilation of Israel, the world's only Jewish state.

Many Jewish students have described feeling intimidated and attacked on campuses. Others have said they support the protests, citing the
situation in Gaza.

Last month, the dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School described antisemitic posters that targeted him.

Too many people denying, downplaying, rationalizing, ignoring the
horrors of the Holocaust and October 7th, including Hamas' appalling use
of sexual violence to torture and terrorize Jews. It's absolutely
despicable and it must stop.

Silence. Silence and denial can hide much but it can erase nothing.

Some injustices are so heinous, so horrific, so grievous they cannot be
married – buried, no matter how hard people try.

In my view, a major lesson of the Holocaust is, as mentioned earlier, is
it not, was not inevitable.

We know hate never goes away. It only hides. And given a little oxygen,
it comes out from under the rocks.

We also know what stops hate. One thing: All of us. The late Rabbi
Jonathan Sacks described antisemitism as a virus that has survived and
mutated over time.

Together, we cannot continue to let that happen. We have to remember our
basic principle as a nation. We have an obligation. We have an
obligation to learn the lessons of history so we don't surrender our
future to the horrors of the past. We must give hate no safe harbor
against anyone. Anyone.

From the very founding, our very founding, Jewish Americans, who
represented only about 2% of the US population, have helped lead the
cause of freedom for everyone in our nation. From that experience we
know scapegoating and demonizing any minority is a threat to every
minority and the very foundation of our democracy.

As of 2020, Jewish Americans made up about 2.4% of the US population,
according to the Pew Research Center, or about 5.8 million people.

So moments like this we have to put these principles that we're talking
about into action.

I understand people have strong beliefs and deep convictions about the
world.

In America we respect and protect the fundamental right to free speech,
to debate and disagree, to protest peacefully and make our voices heard.
I understand. That's America.

The complaint of many protesters is that Israel’s response to the terror attack has claimed more than 30,000 lives and destroyed much of Gaza.

But there is no place on any campus in America, any place in America,
for antisemitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind.

Whether against Jews or anyone else, violent attacks, destroying
property is not peaceful protest. It's against the law and we are not a
lawless country. We're a civil society. We uphold the rule of law and no
one should have to hide or be brave just to be themselves.

To the Jewish community, I want you to know I see your fear, your hurt
and your pain.

Let me reassure you as your president, you're not alone. You belong. You
always have and you always will.

And my commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, the security of
Israel and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state is
ironclad, even when we disagree.

My administration is working around the clock to free remaining
hostages, just as we have freed hostages already, and will not rest
until we bring them all home.

My administration, with our second gentleman's leadership, has launched
our nation's first national strategy to counter antisemitism. That's
mobilizing the full force of the federal government to protect Jewish communities.

But we know this is not the work of government alone or Jews alone.
That's why I’m calling on all Americans to stand united against
antisemitism and hate in all its forms.

My dear friend — and he became a friend — the late Elie Wiesel said,
quote, “One person of integrity can make a difference.”

Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor, writer and activist, died in 2016.

We have to remember that, now more than ever.

Here in Emancipation Hall in the US Capitol, among the towering statues
of history is a bronze bust of Raoul Wallenberg. Born in Sweden as a
Lutheran, he was a businessman and a diplomat. While stationed in
Hungary during World War II, he used diplomatic cover to hide and rescue
about 100,000 Jews over a six-month period.

Read more about Wallenberg, the Holocaust hero and Swedish diplomat who
was formally declared dead in 2016, 71 years after he vanished.

Among them was a 16-year-old Jewish boy who escaped a Nazi labor camp.
After the war ended, that boy received a scholarship from the Hillel
Foundation to study in America. He came to New York City penniless but determined to turn his pain into purpose. Along with his wife, also a
Holocaust survivor, he became a renowned economist and foreign policy
thinker, eventually making his way to this very Capitol on the staff of
a first-term senator.

That Jewish refugee was Tom Lantos and that senator was me. Tom and his
wife and Annette and their family became dear friends to me and my
family. Tom would go on to become the only Holocaust survivor ever
elected to Congress, where he became a leading voice on civil rights and
human rights around the world. Tom never met Raoul, who was taken
prisoner by the Soviets, never to be heard from again.

Read more about Lantos, the longtime congressman and Holocaust survivor
who died in 2008. Lantos worked for Biden early in his career.

But through Tom's efforts, Raoul’s bust is here in the Capitol. He was
also given honorary US citizenship, only the second person ever after
Winston Churchill. The Holocaust Museum here in Washington is located in
a road in Raoul’s name.

The story of the power of a single person to put aside our differences,
to see our common humanity, to stand up to hate and its ancient story of resilience from immense pain, persecution, to find hope, purpose and
meaning in life, we try to live and share with one another. That story
endures.

Let me close with this. I know these days of remembrance fall on
difficult times. We all do well to remember these days also fall during
the month we celebrate Jewish American heritage, a heritage that
stretches from our earliest days to enrich every single part of American
life today.

There are important topics Biden did not address. He referenced the
October 7 attacks on Israel but not Israel’s controversial response,
which has drawn furious protests. He failed to mention Gaza, where
Israel’s military campaign has killed so many, and which has led the
World Food Programme to warn of a “full-blown famine.”

A great American — a great Jewish American named Tom Lantos — used the phrase “the veneer of civilization is paper thin.” We are its guardians, and we can never rest.

My fellow Americans, we must, we must be those guardians. We must never
rest. We must rise Against hate, meet across the divide, see our common humanity. And God bless the victims and survivors of the Shoah.

May the resilient hearts, the courageous spirit and the eternal flame of
faith of the Jewish people forever shine their light on America and
around the world, pray God.

Thank you all.

Related stories

Mapping where university protesters have been arrested across the United
States

Biden says antisemitism has no place in America in somber speech
connecting the Holocaust to Hamas’ attack on Israel

Biden's State of the Union address, annotated and fact-checked
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