President Carter has appointed a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council to carry out the recommendations of his Commission on the Holocaust that had outlined a three-part memorial before it disbanded last October.
The Council consists of 50 private citizens and 10 members of Congress–five Senators and five Representatives. The President appointed as its chairman author Elie Wiesel, one of 13 survivors of the Nazi death camps named to the Council. Wiesel had headed the Holocaust Commission too. The Council’s vice chairman is Mark Talisman, Washington director for the Council of Jewish Federations and farmer aide to Rep. Charles Vanik (D. Ohio).
Rabbi Irving Greenberg of New York City, director of the National Jewish Resource Center who was the Commission’s executive director, had been retained by the President as a Council member. The Council’s membership includes 25 non-Jews, including prominent Holocaust specialists and churchmen.
THREE-PART RECOMMENDATION
The Commission’s three-part memorial, the White House said in announcing the Council, recommends a national Holocaust Memorial Museum to be erected in Washington, an educational foundation “dedicated to the pursuit of educational work through research and exploration of issues raised by the Holocaust for all areas of human knowledge and public policy,” and a Committee on Conscience composed of distinguished American moral leaders which would receive reports of “actual or potential genocide anywhere in the world and alert the national conscience, influence policymakers, and stimulate worldwide action to bring such acts to a halt.”
The White House said, “The President approved these recommendations with the understanding that funding proposals for the memorial should provide that construction costs would be raised primarily from private contributions.”
Among those named to the Council are: Tibor Baranski, of the Catholic Charities in Buffalo, N.Y., honored by Yad Vashem for his actions in saving Hungarian Jews Marver Bernstein, Brandeis University president, Victor Eorge, the actor, long active in a foundation designed to honor Danes; Prof. Robert McAfee Brown of Berkeley; Esther Cohen, chairperson, Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies of Yeshiva University of Los Angeles; Mario Cuomo, Lieutenant Governor of New York State; Prof. Terrence des Pres, of Colgate University; Constantine Dombalis; dean, Greek Orthodox Cathedral; and Kitty Dukakis, president, National Center for Genocide Studies.
Also, Alfred Gottschalk, president, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion; Dorothy Height, president, National Council of Negro Women; Theodore Hesburgh, president, Notre Dame; Norman Lamm, president, Yeshiva University in New York City; Frank Lautenberg, president, United Jewish Appeal; Franklin Littell, Board chairman, National Institute of the Holocaust; Aleysius Mazewski, president, Polish American Congress; Prof. John Pawlikowski, Catholic Theological Union; Bayard Rustin, of the A. Phillip Randolph Institute; Dr. Abraham Sacher, noted scholar; and Glenn Watts, president, Communications Workers of America.
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