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Survivors & Witnesses In Western North Carolina |
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| Choosing to Remember: From the Shoah to the Mountains | |||
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Name: Karl Straus Karl Straus’ Speech to New U.S. Citizens It is indeed an honor and privilege to participate in these naturalization festivities --- and to bring you the congratulations and best wishes of the buncombe county bar association. This occasion is of particular significance to me --- as it was twenty-seven years ago --- almost to the day that I stood in this very courtroom where you are standing now, and received my certificate of naturalization --- when I became an American citizen just like you have become American citizens this morning. So forgive me for injecting a personal note --- but this occasion very beautifully dramatizes and gives living proof of the opportunities of this land of ours --- and it is my honor today as president of the Buncombe County Bar Association, to give to each of you a pamphlet entitled the "Charters of Freedom: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights". This is the charter of our country --- the custodian of our liberties --- and in it are contained the principles of right and justice --- and embodied in its structure is an accumulation of the wisdom and the genius of generation of men and women, --- and we as individual citizens seem unimportant and small --- yet --- it is the individual, --- you and I, --- that justifies the existence of our state, and the system of our government --- and we give the government the responsibility to maintain the conditions, the peace, the order and the justice, under which we, the individuals, can strive and under which we, the individuals, are given an opportunity to develop to the fullest all the abilities with which God has endowed us. It is very appropriate therefore that on this occasion you are presented with copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These documents, this charter of freedom, has formed the basis and given the inspiration for so many of the changes our country has directly and indirectly brought about in the thoughts and philosophies and in the betterment of peoples all over the world --- and it is the same charter of freedom which has been the fundamental basis for so many of the all important changes that have been brought about in our country in the past decades. So, on this day of you naturalization --- I hope and trust, --- that in return for the right and privilege of citizenship, --- you will assume one of the responsibilities of citizenship, the active participation in all the affairs of our government --- and in your endeavors in this direction --- let me share with you my firm conviction that if as a nation and as a people we are to grow and prosper and achieve all that which we are capable of achieving, it is only within the fundamental principles of this our charter of freedom --- that this can come about. I congratulate you and wish you well.
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