[applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] >> joint american history tv on sunday as we take a tour of the clara barton national historic site. clara barton founded the red cross during the civil war and move the headquarters to maryland. we learn about her life and work during nature of the house. sunday at 6 p.m. and tpm -- 10 p.m. eastern on c-span3. >> >> next week, on january 27 it will be the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the auschwitz concentration camp.

-- next on american history tv senator barbara mikulski reflects on the anniversary. this is about 10 minutes. >> next week, on january 27, it will be the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the auschwitz concentration camp. 70 years since the liberation of the auschwitz concentration camp. it was a triumph for our allies. but a melancholy day as the world began to see the films and the photographs come out of this hell hole. i stand here today to remember and remind us all that more than any other word, auschwitz is synonymous with evil. as someone who's very proud of her polish-american heritage, i

visited auschwitz. and i wanted to see it when i had the chance to learn more about my own heritage. and i wanted to see what happened there so that i would remember. and i write today so the world remembers what happened there and then the heroic effort of the allied forces, joined together to be able to save europe and save western civilization. i've introduced a resolution honoring those that survived even today, and those that were lost. that would remind us that we need to work always for tolerance, peace, and justice and always to end genocide. the horrors of auschwitz are incomprehensible and indescribable.

the numbers are grim and even ghoulish. over one million people, men women, and children, lost their lives in auschwitz. 90% were jews. hundreds of thousands were children. and the largest of any of the death camps. auschwitz was created as an interment camp. it was first created as an interment camp for polish dissidents. for hundreds of thousands of poles who were not jewish but were murdered alongside the jews of auschwitz. in occupied poland, a nazi governor named hans frank

declared that poles would forever be enslaved by the third reek but auschwitz went far beyond the poles because the german authorities bought -- brought in people from throughout europe. who were the people that came? they were teachers. they were politicians. they were professors. they were artists and even catholic priests. they were executed or they were executed or barely survived. these are the stories of heroism that arise from the horrors. many poles risked their lives to save jews. i'm reminded of the story of arain sendler, a young social worker in warsaw. she smuggled 200 jewish children out of the ghetto and into a safe house. the gestapo arrested her in 1943. they first tortured her and then condemned to death. ian carski who went on to be a leader of solidarity and of the founding of the new polish democratic government worked for the polish government. spread the allies and in working he visited the warsaw get owe. and he did much to liberate people. but you know this is not a story of numbers or statistics or naming other heroes. it was a story i'm going to tell about myself. in the late 1970's, as a brand

new congresswoman, i traveled to poland. i wanted to see my heritage. and i visited the small really small village that my family came from. where my great grandmother left poland as a 16-year-old girl, to come to the united states, to meet up with her brother, to begin a new life. little money in her pocket, but big dreams in her heart. and the story of america is the story of our family. in baltimore when women didn't even have the right to vote. she came in 1886 and exactly 100 years to the year, i became a united states senator. so i wanted to go back to see where we came from, to really know our story even better. but i also wanted to see the dark side of the history of poland. and i went to auschwitz.

touring the concentration camp was an experience for me that was searing and even today, i carry it not only in my mind's eye but i carry it in my heart. i could not believe the experience. and madam president, you know me. you know, i'm a fairly strong, resilient person. but i think we've even shared stories that i was a child abuse worker. i've seen tough things. but i wasn't prepared for what i saw that day. as i walk through the gate of auschwitz, to see the sign that welcomed the despicable sign of welcome here and we toured -- you don't tour -- it's not a tourist site. it's a memorial. it's sacred ground. it's not a tourist site. but we walked through, and we saw the chambers where people had died. i even went to a particular cell of a father colby, a catholic priest who in the death camp gave his life to protect a jewish member there when they

were ready to shoot him, father colby stepped forward to offer his life instead. father colby in my faith tradition has been canonized a saint for his heroic effort to show that he was willing to martyr himself for another human being and in the belief that god was there. and what he wanted to do. but as i walk through there, and i saw hard things and tough things, and wrenching things repulsive things, repugnant things, then i got to the part that really broke my heart. i got to the part about the children. pictures of children. little children. not that any child's age is there. and then i saw the bins. the bins of the children's shoes. piled up with little shoes.

size two. size three. size four. laced up shoes because they were the shoes that they had in the 1930's and in the 1940's. and then i saw their suitcases. and then i saw over in another corner the eyeglasses that were taken from them. and broken into pieces. and then i saw the pictures of the mothers. i will tell you, madam president, i became unglued. i had to step away. and even today, when i tell you this story, my voice chokes up because it shook my very soul. so as we move into this commemoration, because it certainly is both a celebration

and a commemoration, celebration of a liberation, but a commemoration of -- went on. i knew when i left auschwitz, i knew and i understood, while first of all, we should never have genocide in the war -- in the world again. the second thing, and also so crucial, to my views is that there always needed to be a homeland for the jewish people. why we always need an israel. why it has to be there survivable for the ages and for all who will seek a home there and seek refuge there. so this is why i work so hard on these issues. in terms of the support for israel, the end of genocide, and also the gratitude for all the people who fought. for the people who fought in the underground. for people who fought in the resistance. for people who tried to participate in the famous uprisings. to thank god also for the other fighters. you know, the ones who in the camp gave whatever they could to keep other camp members going. and then for the allied troops. led by the united states of america. when we stood together, we stood and stared evil down. and when we opened up the doors of auschwitz, for freedom and the ability to come out for what

barely alive, that it was indeed an historic moment. we don't want that history ever to have to repeat itself. where there has to be a liberation of a death camp. so i want to also take this opportunity to salute the allies. and all the american people who made us victorious in world war ii. so let's say god bless the united states of america and let's work together for a safe and secure middle east. madam president, i yield the floor. >> holocaust survivors, heads of state and several hundred others gathered this past tuesday in poland to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the auschwitz berkenau and nazi concentration camp where more than one million people mostly jews were killed. sunday at 8:30 a.m. eastern time on american history tv, we'll

air the ceremony. including remarks by the polish president and holocaust survivors. >> with the fcc focusing on net neutrality in february we spoke to chris riley, the senior policy engineer with mozilla and hank killed quist -- hultquist from at&t. >> we need their -- we believe there needs to be reasonable access to network and they need to be effectively enforceable. >> the problem we have where the net neutrality issue is gone, it is not focused on the questions of the rules, which i think there is a lot of consensus around, but is focused around the fcc legal authority to adopt

rules and what jurisdiction we should use and our concern really is that they are going to undo potentially a regulatory status that has existed now for over a decade. >> monday night at 8 p.m. eastern on the communicators on c-span2. >> each week american history sits in on a lecture with one of the nation's college professors. you can watch the classes here every saturday evening at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern. next, st. mary's college of maryland professor charles holden talks about the modernist art movement, labor unrest, race riots, the "red scare," and other destabilizing events that he argues characterized the late 19-teens and 20's. professor holden suggests that violent labor strikes were actually an attempt by workers to bring democracy into the workplace by overturning top-down management. he also describes how radical movements in art and literature