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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary


For Immediate Release December 7, 1999
        PRESIDENT CLINTON NAMES TWO MEMBERS TO THE UNITED STATES
                       HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL COUNCIL

     The President today announced his intent to appoint Deborah E.

Lipstadt and Sidney R. Yates to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt, of Atlanta, Georgia, is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. Among her books are Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory and Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933-1945. Dr. Lipstadt also served as a historical consultant to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and helped design the section of Museum dedicated to the American Response to the Holocaust. Dr. Lipstadt has also consulted with the German government on methods of teaching Jewish history and the Holocaust. In 1996, she was appointed by the Secretary of State to the Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad.

The Honorable Sidney R. Yates, of Chicago, Illinois was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1948, and served there continuously until 1963. In 1963-64 he served as Ambassador to the United Nations on the Trusteeship Council. In September, 1964 he left that position to run again for Congress, was elected and continued to serve as a Representative of the Ninth Congressional District of Illinois until his retirement at the close of the 105th Congress at the end of 1998. Representative Yates was a member of the House Appropriations Committee and also served on the Subcommittee for the Department of the Interior and Related Agencies, which included the Department of Energy, the Smithsonian Institution and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. He was also a member of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee, where he helped determine American aid to foreign nations. He sponsored many items of landmark legislation during his long and distinguished career, including the Family Medical and Leave Act and helped pass the National Child Protection Act. Representative Yates was a strong and early supporter of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and Museum and served as one of 10 Congressional Representatives to the Council. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago, where he also won All Big Ten honors as a basketball player, and his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Council was established in 1979 to provide for the annual commemoration and observance of the Days of Remembrance of the Holocaust, and to construct and operate a living memorial to its victims. The Holocaust Memorial Museum was dedicated in 1993.

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