My name is Andrew Racz.
I was born in 1938, the year of the Munich Conference,
attended by Chancellor Hitler, Daladier of France,
Mussolini, and Neville Chamberlain. There was no
loud voice at the eight-hour conference. The participants
drank coffee.
The United States of
America was not represented. However, history will
record that in early 1938 President Roosevelt invited
all the above participants --- for a peace conference
in New York. Roosevelt offered to pay for all expenditures.
The New York Times,
printed on January 13, 2007, laid out the confrontation
of Senator Boxer and Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, “A Passing Exchange Becomes Political
Flashpoint Focused on Feminism.” There was
not a single word from any of the distinguished
members to refer to the historical conference. The
subject was the fate of American boys falling in
Iraq. Nobody carried the book All Quiet on the
Western Front.
I wonder what would
have been the reception and the historical interpretation
if Senator Boxer had been born seventy years before.
Senator Boxer would
have printed her name permanently in world history
had she addressed forcefully, loudly, and, if I
may say so, confrontationally Chancellor Hitler
in Berchtesgaden. After all, nobody challenged Hitler.
Nobody criticized Hitler and nobody shouted at Hitler.
And this is where the style and courage of the US.
Senator could have risen to the occasion.
Yes, challenge Hiltler.
After all, Neville Chamberlain representing the
almighty British Empire aimed for Peace at any Price.
The world needed an articulate American --- and
there was an ocean between Germany and the USA ---
a powerful posture.
Senator Boxer would
have been applauded by history if in 1938 she would
have said, shouted, at Hitler, saying, and I quote,
“I am saying you are like me. We do not have
families who are in the military.” “Chancellor
Hitler! stop bluffing.” --- the US. Senate
will oppose “your marching.” Save
“German Blood” ! You have 70 million
people --- we have 140, the British 60. What price
Hitler?
“Chancellor,
who pays the price? I am not going to pay a personal
price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is
too young. You are not going to pay a particular
price, as I understand it, you have no immediate
family. You have no family, only a mistress. Who
pays the price? The military and the people you
might bomb. I want to bring this issue out to the
open.”
Undoubtedly, Hitler
would have shouted back. Undoubtedly, an American
senator would have gone even further.
Senator, if I have
anything to do with it, I will tell the world had
you been at Munich in 1938 you would have given
my father a fighting chance, and not only my father,
the whole Racz family.
In 1944 my father was
taken away to Auschwitz. According to the history
book, Eichmann sent him directly to the Auschwitz
gas chamber in the summer of 1944. I was six and
a half years old, standing near the window of our
home in Budapest when a friend of our family told
me that I will never see my father again. This was
in July 1944. A year before, on October 4, 1943,
my mother died of breast cancer. I was an orphan,
and I was, as I realized, alone.
This was almost seventy
years ago. I never forget that day. I never forget
the remarks. I was told by a friend of my family
that I, Andrew Racz, will never have a father and
I will never see my father again.
What price do we have
to pay that in the year 2007 there should not be
another Andrew Racz who would be told at the age
of six and a half that he will never see his father
again.
A sole U.S. senator
picked up a historical issue, which, frankly, the
book All Quiet on the Western Front described
almost a hundred years ago, that there is absolutely
no honor, no happiness, no results of fighting in
the trenches or the streets of Baghdad.
The Senate and the
press tried to make a hero out of Secretary Rice,
who had no policy of winning the war, who had no
policy of bringing home the boys. They tried to
make her a hero.
Secretary Rice stated
that she thought it’s okay to be single, okay
to have no children, she can still make a decision.
What decision, Madame
Secretary?
The West never confronted
Hitler in 1938. The West, and particularly the United
States, in 1938 did not stand with Under-Secretary
of State Sumner Wells, sent Senator Boxer to Europe,
who would have shouted, screamed, hit the table
with one message, “What price Hitler?”
Do we care now if Senator Boxer had been in Munich
at the conference table and asked Hitler, “Do
you know the price people pay? You have no family.”
Yes, Hitler had no family. He had no feeling for
anybody. That we can never change. But the issue
is that in 1938 there was no Senator Boxer, there
was no voice of the United States at the Munich
Conference. There was nobody who would have confronted
Hitler. After all, a U.S. senator had behind herself
an ocean and the power and prestige of the most
powerful nation in the world. Had Senator Boxer
been in Munich she would have made a tremendous
upheaval. She would have been the first person to
ask Hitler, “Mr. Chancellor, what price is
the world going to pay for your policies?”
The issue was, after all, a world war. Hitting the
table was infinitely more desirable. Appeasement
or confrontation? We could have done worse.
And now I bring back
reality. Seventy years later a single voice bravely
threw at the American Secretary of State a question.
Do you know what you are doing? Do you know the
consequences of what you are doing? Do you know
how many more families will have the hole, the emptiness,
which will never be replaced?
I trust that the Senator
will continue her reasoning. I trust that she will
repeat what she said, and ask again and again the
question, “Do we know what it means when a
six and a half year old boy suddenly says, “you
will never see your father again?”
If we carry this imaginary
picture further, and had President Roosevelt achieved
that his representative, Senator Boxer, attended
the Munich Conference, it would have been vastly
different. In any case, history couldn't have taken
a worse turn.
It was 1938. Marshall
Stalin probably would have made a non-aggression
pact with the United States. Hitler probably wouldn’t
have attacked. The Manhattan Project wouldn’t
have been born.
You’d be living
in a world, with the world having only conventional
arms, and a hundred million people who would have
survived had a U.S. senator, equipped with the power
and prestige of its might, as it has in the year
2007, hit the table and shouted into the eyes of
Chancellor Hitler a simple question. “Herr
Chancellor, do you know what you are doing?”
History would say that
asking this question, whether it is Chancellor Hitler
or Secretary Rice, is perfectly within the right
and being the duty of a U.S. senator.
