Thomas Daschle: “today is a holy day, Yom Hashoah. It is a day set aside every year to remember the victims of the Holocaust. I had the…”

“today is a holy day, Yom Hashoah. It is a day set aside every year to remember the victims of the Holocaust. I had the privilege of starting this Yom Hashoah morning with an extraordinary group of people, the Founders of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Founders are men and women from across America who have given at least $1 million to the Holocaust Museum. This week, as we mark the fifth anniversary of the opening of the museum, it seems an especially appropriate time to recognize the incredible gift the Founders, and all the museum's supporters, have given our nation. We are indebted to them all--particularly to Miles Lerman, chairman of the museum council, and Ruth Mandel, the council's vice chair, and to my dear friend Abe Pollin, the chairman of this year's Founders Reunion. One of the sages of the Torah told us more than 200 years ago that God could have created plants that would grow loaves of bread. Instead, he created wheat for us to grow and mill and transform into bread. Why? Because He wanted us to be able to take part in the miracle of creation. That is what the Holocaust Museum Founders have done. They used stone and steel and sacred artifacts, rather than wheat. But they have unquestionably experienced the miracle of creation. Simon Dubrow, the great Jewish historian, was one of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. He was killed in the Latvian ghetto of Riga by a Gestapo officer who had once been his student.”