↩ the History · a speech, filed

At Bergen-Belsen

Ronald Reagan · Bergen-Belsen, Federal Republic of Germany · May 5, 1985
text: The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara · a work of the United States government, in the public domain
colour carries the act's function; a dashed underline marks a predicted misfire; hover or focus any span for its filing

Chancellor Kohl and honored guests, this painful walk into the past has done much more than remind us of the war that consumed the European Continent. What we have seen makes unforgettably clear that no one of the rest of us can fully understand the enormity of the feelings carried by the victims of these camps. The survivors carry a memory beyond anything that we can comprehend. The awful evil started by one man, an evil that victimized all the world with its destruction, was uniquely destructive of the millions forced into the grim abyss of these camps.

Here lie people—Jews—whose death was inflicted for no reason other than their very existence. Their pain was borne only because of who they were and because of the God in their prayers. Alongside them lay many Christians—Catholics and Protestants.

For year after year, until that man and his evil were destroyed, hell yawned forth its awful contents. People were brought here for no other purpose but to suffer and die—to go unfed when hungry, uncared for when sick, tortured when the whim struck, and left to have misery consume them when all there was around them was misery.

I'm sure we all share similar first thoughts, and that is: What of the youngsters who died at this dark stalag? All was gone for them forever—not to feel again the warmth of life's sunshine and promise, not the laughter and the splendid ache of growing up, nor the consoling embrace of a family. Try to think of being young and never having a day without searing emotional and physical pain—desolate, unrelieved pain.

Today, we've been grimly reminded why the commandant of this camp was named "the Beast of Belsen." Above all, we're struck by the horror of it all—the monstrous, incomprehensible horror. And that's what we've seen but is what we can never understand as the victims did. Nor with all our compassion can we feel what the survivors feel to this day and what they will feel as long as they live. What we've felt and are expressing with words cannot convey the suffering that they endured. That is why history will forever brand what happened as the Holocaust.

Here, death ruled, but we've learned something as well. Because of what happened, we found that death cannot rule forever, and that's why we're here today. We're here because humanity refuses to accept that freedom of the spirit of man can ever be extinguished. We're here to commemorate that life triumphed over the tragedy and the death of the Holocaust-overcame the suffering, the sickness, the testing and, yes, the gassings. We're here today to confirm that the horror cannot outlast hope, and that even from the worst of all things, the best may come forth. Therefore, even out of this overwhelming sadness, there must be some purpose, and there is. It comes to us through the transforming love of God.

We learn from the Talmud that: "It was only through suffering that the children of Israel obtained three priceless and coveted gifts: The Torah, the Land of Israel, and the World to Come." Yes, out of this sickness-as crushing and cruel as it was—there was hope for the world as well as for the world to come. Out of the ashes—hope, and from all the pain—promise.

So much of this is symbolized today by the fact that most of the leadership of free Germany is represented here today. Chancellor Kohl, you and your countrymen have made real the renewal that had to happen. Your nation and the German people have been strong and resolute in your willingness to confront and condemn the acts of a hated regime of the past. This reflects the courage of your people and their devotion to freedom and justice since the war. Think how far we've come from that time when despair made these tragic victims wonder if anything could survive.

As we flew here from Hanover, low over the greening farms and the emerging springtime of the lovely German countryside, I reflected, and there must have been a time when the prisoners at Bergen-Belsen and those of every other camp must have felt the springtime was gone forever from their lives. Surely we can understand that when we see what is around us—all these children of God under bleak and lifeless mounds, the plainness of which does not even hint at the unspeakable acts that created them. Here they lie, never to hope, never to pray, never to love, never to heal, never to laugh, never to cry.

And too many of them knew that this was their fate, but that was not the end. Through it all was their faith and a spirit that moved their faith.

Nothing illustrates this better than the story of a young girl who died here at Bergen-Belsen. For more than 2 years Anne Frank and her family had hidden from the Nazis in a confirmed annex in Holland where she kept a remarkably profound diary. Betrayed by an informant, Anne and her family were sent by freight car first to Auschwitz and finally here to Bergen-Belsen.

Just 3 weeks before her capture, young Anne wrote these words: "It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them because in spite of everything I still believe that people are good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever approaching thunder which will destroy us too; I can feel the suffering of millions and yet, if I looked up into the heavens I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end and that peace and tranquility will return again." Eight months later, this sparkling young life ended here at Bergen-Belsen. Somewhere here lies Anne Frank.

Everywhere here are memories—pulling us, touching us, making us understand that they can never be erased. Such memories take us where God intended His children to go—toward learning, toward healing, and, above all, toward redemption. They beckon us through the endless stretches of our heart to the knowing commitment that the life of each individual can change the world and make it better.

We're all witnesses; we share the glistening hope that rests in every human soul. Hope leads us, if we're prepared to trust it, toward what our President Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. And then, rising above all this cruelty, out of this tragic and nightmarish time, beyond the anguish, the pain and the suffering for all time, we can and must pledge: Never again.

The divergences

"This painful walk into the past has done much more than remind us of the war that consumed the European Continent" — the travelling press files an Assertion about what a morning did; a mourner at the mounds files a Frame-set, because the clause enters Belsen in the ledger of "the war." They part on target: whether the sentence reports the visit's effect or fixes the category the visit belongs to. Thirteen months earlier at Pointe du Hoc the same presidency stood on war ground where the dead were soldiers and the act available was honour. Here the dead are not combatants and honour is unavailable, which leaves the war frame carrying the day's itinerary — a camp in the morning and a military cemetery at Bitburg in the afternoon.

"The awful evil started by one man" — the American audience files an Assertion of historical cause; a survivor files a Palter. Nothing in the clause is false. The doers named in this speech are a man, a commandant, the Nazis, a regime and an informant, none of them named, and everything done to a person is done in the passive. They part on motive — whether the true thing said is the whole of what it was chosen to convey. The filing matters because seven paragraphs later the German people are credited with confronting that regime, and a crime with a single author leaves everyone else in the position of having been governed by it.

"We're here to commemorate that life triumphed over the tragedy and the death of the Holocaust-overcame the suffering, the sickness, the testing and, yes, the gassings" — the ceremony's organisers file a Declaration fixing what the assembly is for; a survivor files an Assertion and checks it against the ground, where nothing triumphed over the gassings for the people beneath it. They part on function: constituting a purpose, or reporting an outcome. The "yes" before "the gassings" is the speaker reaching for the hardest item on his own list, and it is the item the claim cannot carry.

"It was only through suffering that the children of Israel obtained three priceless and coveted gifts" — read narrow, a passage from the tradition of the people under these mounds, quoted at their grave. Read wide, a doctrine that assigns their murder a yield. They part on scope, and the speech chooses wide in the sentence that follows: "there was hope for the world as well as for the world to come." The Talmud is the one authority on the page the hosts cannot furnish and the dead cannot dispute, which is what makes the wide reading available at this graveside and nowhere else on the itinerary.

"Chancellor Kohl, you and your countrymen have made real the renewal that had to happen" — the men on the platform file a Declaration conferred on the leadership named in the sentence before, "most of the leadership of free Germany"; the audience at home files a certificate of national rehabilitation, issued at a mass grave by a visiting head of state. They part on scope, and the next sentence performs the widening itself: "Your nation and the German people." The wide filing is the one the day required, because the wreath went down that afternoon at Bitburg, where Waffen-SS dead lie among the Wehrmacht.

"Surely we can understand that when we see what is around us" — the assembly at the mounds files an Assertion about what the sight makes available; the speech's own record makes the same words a bid for standing among those who understand, since "no one of the rest of us can fully understand" was entered in the first paragraph and "what we can never understand as the victims did" in the fifth. They part on orientation: the world, or a place among the people who have seen it. "Surely" occupies the position an argument for the reversal would take.

"Never again" — two words with no subject, no tense and no named undertaker. Survivors and the audience at home file a Promise and supply the promisor themselves: the government of the man speaking. The hosts file the Order that introduces it — "we can and must pledge" — a resolution the assembly adopts about itself, which is the form the Federal Republic's own commitment had taken for forty years. A third filing takes it as a Declaration that closes the moral account of the visit and releases the motorcade. They part on function, and the text cannot settle it: a pledge needs someone who pledges, something pledged and someone who can hold the pledger to it, and the sentence supplies none of the three. What it does supply is the "we" this speech has spent fourteen paragraphs assembling — the party that cannot understand, cannot feel what the survivors feel, and cannot convey what it has seen. Who is bound is left to the hearer, and the afternoon's other ceremony is what made the question live.