The Washington Post - Why I require FBI agents to visit the Holocaust Museum, by FBI Director James B. Comey
In a speech given at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s 2015 National Tribute Dinner on April 15, James B. Comey, raised in an Irish Catholic household and now the director of the FBI, explained why he requires all FBI agents to visit the Holocaust Museum.
He says, “I know it is our duty, our obligation, to make sure some good comes from unimaginable bad. Not so we can comfort ourselves by saying, ‘Oh, that was worth it then.’ That’s nonsense. That would be perverse. It will never be ‘worth it.’ “
Instead, he says, it is our duty to refuse to let bad win. We can all do this in different ways: some through public service, some through education.
Agents visit the Museum, he says, to confront humanity, and what we’re capable of:
“In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil. They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do. That’s what people do. And that should truly frighten us.”