Sample: From the Welcoming Remarks by D. O. Cooke, Director of Administration and Management for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Pentagon, Friday, May 1, 1992.

Welcome to our annual Department of Defense Days of Remembrance program. We are pleased that you have joined us to reflect upon the universal lessons of the Holocaust.

The United States Congress enacted Public Law 96388 on October 7, 1980, establishing the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. This Council coordinates the annual national ceremony for the Days of Remembrance in Washington, D.C., and encourages local programs and ceremonies throughout the country. Since 1984 observances have been held in the Pentagon, and on U.S. military ships as well as land bases and installations throughout the world. Mindful of the fact that it was our nation's soldiers who were among the first to witness evidence of the Holocaust as they liberated concentration camps across western Europe, the Secretary of Defense has encouraged our military commands to organize and participate in Remembrance programs as part of our country's national effort.

The Holocaust will forever serve as a reminder of the values we cherish but can lose so easily, which we in the Department of Defense work daily to preserve. Human dignity does not need to be decided on the battlefield, but in the minds and hearts of men and women everywhere. Thus we gather to remember the victims and to honor the survivors of this great human tragedy, and to reaffirm our personal commitment to the freedoms we are pledged to defend.

5. Invocation

Sample: Delivered by the Reverend Richard C. Halverson, Chaplain of the United States Senate, for the national civic Days of Remembrance ceremony held in the Capitol Rotunda on Thursday, April 11, 1991. Reprinted from Fifty Years Ago: In the Depths of Darkness, the 1992 Days of Remembrance Commemorative Program Planning Guide, United States Holocaust Memorial Council, p. 180.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. "And I will bless them that bless Thee and curse him that cursed Thee, and in Thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, on this day of Remembrance, we recall God's promise to Abraham that the descendants of Isaac, his son, would bless all the families of the earth. We praise and thank Thee for the fulfillment of that promise, for the incalculable contribution the children of Israel have made in human history. With profound gratitude, we remember their leadership in science, music, drama, literature, commerce, industry, and finance. Especially are we thankful for the book they gave us, the Bible, and for their belief in the one true God, without beginning and without end, for the hope of eternal life and the promise of a King who would rule in an unending reign.

We remember the unspeakable tragedy of their recurring suffering through the centuries, and we recall, with shame, the culpability of those who called themselves Christians who have been a part of this lamentable, irrational, monstrous violence. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem and the blessing of Almighty God upon this people without whose contribution history would have suffered immeasurable poverty. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Amen.

6. Introduction of Special Guests

7. Musical Interlude; Audiovisual Program; Selected Readings

Suggestions for music: A wide variety of music is suitable for performance in commemoration of the Holocaust, and appropriate pieces can be chosen from traditional sources. Traditional musical selections from the U.S. Army Band (Pershing's Own), the only Washington, D.C., area army band to have seen com

bat duty in Europe during World War II, include "American Soldier," "Covenant to Remember," and "America the Beautiful." The Holocaust itself, however, has inspired many original musical compositions that should also be considered, ranging from simple songs to full orchestral arrangements. Suggestions for music are available from the Education Department of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Suggestions for audiovisuals: See "Some Suggested Resources for Days of Remembrance Materials" in this section.

Suggestions for readings: See the anthology of eyewitness testimonies elsewhere in this Guide. Selections such as the following from the members of the American Armed Forces are also appropriate.

The following narrative was composed by Mark Murray, Special Events Officer, Military District of Washington, D.C. It was presented at the national civic Days of Remembrance commemoration in the Capitol Rotunda on April 18, 1985, the fortieth anniversary of liberation.

"With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast/Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found/No rest . . . /... shades of death,.../ Where all life dies, death lives, . . . / Abominable, inutterable, and worse. . ." These forgotten shreds of Paradise Lost flashed into the consciousness of the young American Army doctor as he walked into the camp at Dachau on a spring day in 1945.

He was one of the Liberators-the Liberators came from all walks and stations of American life-imbued since birth in the principles of fair play, honor, and reverence for life. They had been called from that life into the greatest war in the history of mankind. They had been tested in the inferno of combat, they had witnessed the horror of war from Normandy to the Ardennes-death was no stranger. However, their minds could not comprehend the scene before them. They stared into the vacant eyes of the survivors; they saw the true depth of civilization's veneer. They saw no joy or anger, only the hollow look of humans without hope.

The survivors, too, believed at one time in kindness and love for all mankind. But because of who they were, they had been selected for the most horrible and depraved systematic killings of humans ever devised on this earth. All was gone-fathers, mothers, childen, homes-there were no tears left. No cries of anguish, no God. The liberators, at long last, had found the real truth of why they fought and died. To immediately relieve this human suffering was not impossible and would be done-but what else? Suddenly, as they looked into each other's eyes, a silent covenant was invoked. A pact between them that they together would not let the world forget. They swore to each other they would bear witness to remind mankind that this could happen again.

And so they parted, each to pick up his life again. Today we pause to reflect and renew that covenant to remember, made on that spring day [not so long ago], and to again remind the world: "For the dead and the living we must bear witness."

General James M. Gavin, Commander of the 82d Airborne Division, led his men in the 1945 spring offensive across western Europe until the Germans surrendered. General Gavin was awarded the Eisenhower Liberation Medal by the United States Holocaust Memorial Council on Thursday, April 14, 1988, at the national civic Days of Remembrance commemoration. General Gavin had written in his book, On to Berlin: Battles of an Airborne Commander, 1943-1946 (reprinted with permission in the United States Holocaust Memorial Council's 1988 National Civic Ceremony Days of Remembrance program):

One could smell the Woebbelin concentration camp before seeing it. And seeing it was more than a human being could stand. Even after three years of war it brought tears to my eyes.... The camp contained political prisoners of all ages. One of the first tarpaper-covered shacks that we entered had been occupied only by the Jews.... One Jewish boy named Paul was from Budapest. He had been thrown into a concentration camp at ten, and four times he had been to the gas chambers, and four times they had withdrawn him at the last moment. One was Peter G. Martin, a sixty-sevenyear-old Paris works manager, who two years earlier had made the mistake of questioning Nazi policies. We found a Dutch boy who had been taken shortly after our landings in Holland in the fall of '44 for being in disagreement with the German occupation policies in Holland.

And when it came to an end, there was not a man in the ranks of the 82d Airborne Division who did not believe that it was a war that had to be fought. The powerful Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe had rampaged across the face of Europe, living off the land, looting and destroying as they went, and sending to concentration camps those who did not meet the standards-political, racial, or whatever they were of the super race. More than six million human beings had lost their lives at the hands of the executioners of Hitler's "final solution." And even then the gas ovens were being enlarged when we overran the concentration camps.

From a presentation made by Father Edward P. Doyle, who had participated in the liberation of Nordhausen as a United States Army chaplain, on the occasion of the International Liberators Conference, held in the Department of State, Washington, D.C., October 1981, and reprinted in The Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1945, United States Holocaust Memorial Council, pp. 102-4.

I was there. I was present. I saw the sights. I will never forget....

On the night of April 11, 1945, my division, of which I was the Catholic chaplain, took the town of Nordhausen. The following morning, with the dawn, we discovered a concentration camp. Immediately the call went out for all the medics possible, for all personnel that could be spared, to be present. It was my want as a Catholic priest to serve my regiment during combat at the medical center. Having heard this, I immediately went and of course saw the sights that very morning of our capturing and taking over this place. . . .

I might ask, why did I go into the service? I believe, as all of us believe, that patriotism and religion are from the same parent virtue of justice. General Pershing told us that religion and patriotism go together-to love God, you love your country-and they belong indeed together. So I...put on the uniform of the United States Army as a chaplain, and went through France and Belgium and Holland.

On that morning in Nordhausen, I knew why I was there. I found the reason for it—man's inhumanity to man. What has happened to that beautiful commandment of the Decalogue, the Commandment of God to love one another? ...

I have never forgotten. . . . Particularly on holy days when we remember all those who have gone before us, my mind is very keenly centered on the obligation to remember. . . . I adapted a beautiful poem . . . "In Flanders Fields," [which] was written by a Canadian colonel. . . . I call it "In a Foreign Field."

In a foreign field we now repose.

Who we are nobody knows!

God knows we suffered at the hand of man. Now we rest in another land.

We are the dead: short years of life

We lived, felt hope and saw human strife Loved and in turn were loved, and now We lie in a foreign field.

Take up our quarrel with the foe!

To you from failing hands we throw THE TORCH. 'Tis yours to hold high! If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, for we lie In a foreign field.

Shortly after troops of General Patton's Third Army liberated the Nazi slave-labor camp at Ohrdruf in April 1945, an American chaplain, Rev. James B. Ficklen, entered the camp. He was almost overwhelmed by the horror there, but steeled himself and

recorded it all with his camera. He wrote his wife about "the worst thing I've ever seen." From the collections of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, a letter dated April 15, 1945, to Carol Ficklen.

On Friday I visited a camp where the Germans kept their slave-laborers. . . . The Germans starved their slavelabor till they were living skeletons, and when they became too ill or weak to work they killed them, stacked their bodies in a neat-looking little hut till they got around to hauling them about a mile farther up the hill and arranging them on piles of rails (wooden), then putting on steel rails, then a layer of bodies and another layer of bodies and another layer of wooden rails. Then the whole pile was set on fire and the bodies burned. What was left was thrown into a common grave on the edge of the woods just beyond the fire pile. At the labor camp there were numbers of emaciated bodies shot through the head and lying in the yard when I arrived. They were just skin and bones. They had on striped housecoats and old clothes. I took pictures of this unbelievable scene to make it clear to people at home that the accounts of German oppression and murder in concentration and labor camps are all too true. I saw dozens of skeleton-like bodies in the process of burial by German civilians whom our army forced to dig graves, take the lime-covered bodies, wrap them in white cloth, provided by the American army, and bury them. I also took photographic evidence of the charred bodies still on the pile of wood at the top of the hill. I went through the so-called barracks in which these prisoners existed. I saw some men who were still alive. One man was eating an apple-it must have been the first fresh fruit he had had in many a long month. Usually they got bread and water once a day. I saw one man lying in bed dead. He appeared to have died from hunger. Above his bed was the picture of a girl. Most of the men slept on filthy bags stuffed with straw that lay on the floor. . . . I saw other things that will hardly do to write about. That was a hell on earth if there ever was one. This is the sort of oppression that is being ended by Allied victory in Europe. . . .

Message from Brigadier General Daniel M. Kelleher, United States Army, Commander, Headquarters Military Traffic Management, Western Area, Oakland Army Base, Oakland, California, on April 27, 1992, and printed in the USA program for the occasion.

During the week of April 26 through May 3, 1992, Oakland Army Base observes the 1992 Days of Remembrance. We choose to remember the atrocities of the Holocaust, although the memories are painful, because the cost is greater should we forget.

We are privileged to be sharing this solemn occasion with two who have seen the horrors of the concentration

camps: one, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau, William J. Lowenberg, Vice Chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council; the other, a liberator of Ebensee with the 3d Army, Mr. Kenneth J. Colvin. Their stories remind us of a cruel and unjust time just five decades ago, when one group of people sought to destroy others simply because they were different.

In commemorating the Holocaust, we not only mourn the dead, but celebrate the triumph of the human will that has enabled others to survive.

As we recall the horrific events of that time, we can reflect on ways to prevent history from repeating itself. We all must continue to remember, to teach, and to involve ourselves in struggles for human rights, so that we need never write another Holocaust into our history through word or deed.

With much emotion I accept this medal on behalf of all the brave soldiers who liberated Europe.

As a soldier who has seen some combat, I have vivid images of that first group of soldiers to discover each of the concentration camps. Particularly that group of battle-hardened veterans of the 4th Armored Division who in the early days of April 1945 came upon the camp at Ohrdruf.

Months earlier, they had burst from the Normandy beachhead like a roaring forest fire, raced seven hundred miles across France, and taken more prisoners and engaged and destroyed more enemy units in a shorter period of time than any other unit in modern history. They were tough. They were fearless. They felt they were invincible.

Then they stumbled onto the camp at Ohrdruf. Listen to the words of one infantryman: "I guess the most vivid recollection of the whole camp is the pyre. . . . It was a big pit where they had stacked bodies, stacked bodies like wood and burned them. I guess I'll never forget the ashes. . . ." The 4th Armored shuddered to a halt. Nothing had prepared them for this.

Generals Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley had to see it for themselves, unable to believe the reports of their forward units. "The smell of death overwhelmed us even before we passed through the stockade," General Bradley re

called. He said that Eisenhower turned pale and silent, but insisted that he would see the entire camp.

Thirty-two hundred bodies had been thrown into shallow graves. Other emaciated corpses simply lay where they had died. General Patton moved off and went behind a barracks and threw up. Out of character for Eisenhower, he became violently angry and turned and snapped at a soldier standing nearby. Every word the General spoke was filled with his immense revulsion. One man described his words that day as "falling like icicles."

General Eisenhower finally left the camp and went to Third Army headquarters and cabled Washington. His message read: "We are constantly finding... camps . . . where unspeakable conditions exist. From my own personal observation, I can state unequivocally that all written statements up to now do not paint the full horrors." Later he would say to Marshall, "For most of it, I have no words."

Those soldiers would never be the same again. The camps were a turning point in their lives. They had confronted an utter disregard for the nobler aspirations of which mankind is capable. That is why they insisted at once on remembrance. And that is why we must never forget. . . .

God of all humankind, as we close this meeting for observance, we pray for Your blessing with mingled emotions. Our hearts are ridden with anguish at the remembrance of the millions who were tormented and tortured, machinegunned and gassed during the Holocaust. At the same time, our hearts swell with gratitude for the gallant and courageous men and women of the American Army, led by their valiant and compassionate General Dwight D. Eisenhower, my own Commander, the hundredth anniversary of his birth we mark this year. That historic fighting force rescued the remnant plucked from the fire, and brought human kindness and healing and shelter to the survivors.

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We ask, oh, God, that You bless us with the determination to stand forthrightly against every manifestation of man's inhumanity to man, against bigotry and prejudice, against racism and hatred so that the word "Holocaust" need never be used again.

The Lord bless us and keep us. The Lord deal kindly and graciously with us. The Lord bestow His favor upon us and grant us, and all his children everywhere, peace. Amen.

10. Retirement of Colors