It is fitting for the United States to undertake this task and practice what it preaches to others. To date, more than a dozen countries, including Switzerland, have formed historical committees or commissions to study their role and attitudes during the war period. H.R. 3662 would bring the United States into parity with other nations by creating a similar body. The Commission proposed under this bill would be composed of 21 individuals, including eight members of the House and the Senate. The assets would be defined broadly, to include everything from bank accounts and securities to real estate and rare books.
Moral quandaries are central to restitution issues.
As one of our hearing witnesses, Professor Leora Batnitzky noted, the Nazis robbed Holocaust victims not only of their possession and their lives, but also of the memory of their existence on this earth. Inquiries into the nature of evil and how to behave in the face of it are not the normal stuff of governmental review. In this case, however, such questions are relevant not only to the behavior of all countries involved in World War II, including our own, but to the question of establishing retrospective justice and the broader responsibility of each generation of leadership to learn from the past. Our century has been indelibly marked by the Holocaust and our perception of human nature has been profoundly altered by it. It is imperative that every credible review effort be undertaken, of which this is one.