Ronald Reagan dedicated the Holocaust Memorial Museum Cornerstone

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I acclaim our Party's respect for human rights. October 5th 1988, President Ronald Reagan dedicated the cornerstone of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

"We gather here today, as we have been so eloquently told here, for a solemn, profound, saddening, and yet triumphant occasion. It's an occasion that commemorates all we've lost — the irreplaceable humanity whose monstrous end will ever testify to the hellish depths of human evil. But it's an occasion that commemorates something else as well, it commemorates the seriousness of our intention — as human beings, as Americans, and, in the case of many here today, as Jews — to keep the memory of the six million, fresh and enduring."

"We who did not go their way owe them this. We must make sure their deaths have posthumous meaning. We must make sure that from now until the end of days all humankind stares this evil in the face, that all humankind knows what this evil looks like and how it came to be. And when we truly know it for what it was, then and only then can we be sure that it will never come again."

"To fulfill that mission, the museum will study the history of the Holocaust, provide an invaluable resource for researchers, and bring together in one place the greatest array of information and knowledge on this necessary subject. It will examine the nature and meaning of the continuing curse that is anti-Semitism. I think all of us here are aware of those, even among our own countrymen, who have dedicated themselves to the disgusting task of minimizing or even denying the truth of the Holocaust. This act of intellectual genocide must not go unchallenged, and those who advance these views must be held up to the scorn and wrath of all good and thinking people in this nation and across the world."

"I'd like to tell those of you who do not know it already about a song that was sung in the camps. It was a Yiddish song, and like many of the camp ballads, it was not about the hunger and the torture and the dying but about the coming of the Messiah. 'What will happen,' the song asks, 'when the Messiah comes?' And the answer is: 'When the Messiah comes, we'll have a banquet.'

"I believe those who perished in the Holocaust have, after long suffering, attended that banquet. I cannot imagine our Lord would deny their request. We here will inscribe their names in human memory, and pray that God may bless us all."

Back to Basics for the Republican Party is my civil rights history of the GOP. To quote the book: "The more we Republicans know about the history of our party, the more Democrats will worry about the future of theirs. For more information, see www.grandoldpartisan.com. 

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Michael Zak is author of Back to Basics for the Republican Party, a history of GOP civil rights achievement.

Each day, his YouTube videos and TikTok videos and Rumble videos and Grand Old Partisan blog celebrate more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. And, see Speech Raves for audience feedback from his presentations in thirty-one states.

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