speeches
Opening of "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race"
Deutsches Hygiene Museum Dresden
Ambassador William R. Timken. Jr.
Dresden
October 11, 2006
Petersberg, Steigenberger Grandhotel
Herr Vogel, I would like to thank the German Hygiene Museum for putting on this exhibit.
Minister President Milbradt, Minister Schäuble, thank you for welcoming the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, one of America’s most important national museums, to Germany.
I would like to take a few minutes to introduce the representatives of the museum who have traveled to Dresden to join us here this evening.
Sara Bloomfield is the Director of the HolocaustMemorialMuseum. She joined the museum in 1986 when it was still in the planning stages. There were complex issues involved in building a living memorial to the Holocaust in the United States. She became the director in 1999 and under her leadership, the museum has expanded its national and international presence. Ms. Bloomfield oversees an exemplary public-private partnership. Over half of the museum’s annual budget comes from the federal government; the other half from private contributions. I would also like to recognize Fred Zeidman and Joel Geiderman from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Their generosity and resolute support of the Museum has made it one of America’s most vital educational and civic institutions.
The HolocaustMuseum and the Department of State cooperate closely. We share a common goal, namely, promoting peace, tolerance and understanding. Sixty years after the Holocaust, our world still is confronted with hatred and bigotry that, if unchecked, could have unthinkable and tragic consequences.
The HolocaustMuseum and the State Department work together within the framework of “The Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research.” The task force is dedicated to ensuring that the memory of the Holocaust remains in the foreground of the world's conscience. It supports projects ranging from teacher training to the creation of educational web sites to the preservation of memorial sites and the publication or translation of scholarly books.
Last April, during a visit with Sara Bloomfield at the Holocaust Museum, Germany's Justice Minister Zypries pledged her government's commitment to opening the records administered by the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, the world's most important archive of Holocaust-related material. I am pleased to report that in July I joined the representatives of nine other nations at the signing ceremony of amendments to the International Tracing Service agreement. The Bad Arolsen records of the Nazis’ crimes will now be accessible to legitimate scholarship. Research in this archive is important so future generations can bear witness to the tragedy of the Holocaust.
In this exhibit -- "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race" -- curator Susan Bachrach also bears witness, and points to the lessons of history.
The exhibit documents how the Nazis took a widely respected scientific idea and step-by- step used it to justify the atrocities of Hitler's regime. That idea was eugenics, which once heralded better living through genetic intervention. It is an idea that lost all respectability from its Nazi associations, though not all its relevance, as contemporary debates about abortion, euthanasia and the genome project make clear. The ethical issues associated with euthanasia, genetic screening, racial breeding, designer genes are rarely presented as starkly as they are when one studies the history of Nazi Germany. This exhibition doesn't make the answers any simpler, but that is one of its virtues.
This exhibit is a reminder to never shut our eyes, never refuse to acknowledge, and insist on the truth.
Thank you
