The General Dwight David Eisenhower Plaza
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Panel 1:
Dedicated in gratitude to the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, General Dwight David Eisenhower and the valiant soldiers of all Allied Armies he led into battle.
Victorious in battle, they brought the Third Reich to an end, encountered its concentration camps, liberated the survivors and bore witness to the Holocaust.
Panel 2:
“The things I saw beggar description … the visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations to propaganda.”
Gen. Dwight David Eisenhower
Supreme commander of the Allied Forces
Ohrdruf Concentration Camp
April 15, 1945
Panel 3:
"Out of our memory … of the Holocaust we must forge an unshakable oath with all civilized people that never again will the world stand silent, never again with the world … fail to act in time to prevent this terrible crime of genocide … We must harness the outrage of our own memories to stamp out oppression wherever it exists. We must understand that human rights and human dignity are indivisible."
Jimmy Carter
39th President of the United States
September 27, 1979
Panel 4:
"We who did not go their way owe them this: We must make sure that 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 … and only then can we be sure that it will never arise again."
Ronald Reagan
40th President of the United States
October 5, 1988
Marker is on Raoul Wallenberg Way (15th St.), SW south of Independence Avenue, SW.
Courtesy hmdb.org
