It is a great pleasure for me to be here today to honor some outstanding Germans who have made extraordinary contributions to preserving Jewish history, culture, cemeteries, and synagogues in their own local communities. I would especially like to thank Walter Momper, the president of the Berlin Parliament, who supported and co-sponsored this award, his predecessor, Reinhard Fuehrer, who initiated this co-sponsorship, and Hendrik Kuebler, who made certain that all the arrangements in Berlin have run smoothly. Special thanks are also due to Sara Nachama and the other board and jury members, whose continual advice and judgment have been so important; to Betty Solbjor, our U.S. coordinator, who has done a great job; and to my wife, Judy, who has been a tremendous support to me at all times. The award booklet that has been provided to each of you was prepared in German by Hendrik Klein, and in English by my son, Joel Obermayer, and his friend Lani Harac.

I would also like to recognize in the audience . Alexander Brenner, the president of the Berlin Jewish Community, and Petra Blaess, who is the Vice President of the German Bundestag.

For the first time, our awards are not only being given today in Berlin, but also in New York City. One of our awardees, Dorothee Lottmann-Kaeseler, is in New York as an invited speaker at the annual meeting of the Council of American Jewish Museums. The former Chair of this council, Karen Franklin, is also in New York attending these meetings. If it were not for these meetings, she would be here because she is a member of the board and jury of the German Jewish Community History Council, as well as another coordinator of the German Jewish Special Interest Group. We are pleased that Karen Franklin is having the opportunity to present our award to Dorothee Lottmann-Kaeseler before an audience of several hundred people at the meeting of the Council of American Jewish Museums, which is taking place at the Center for Jewish History.

I am sorry that I am unable to address you in German. All four of my grandparents were born in Germany in the 19th century, but the ability to speak in German has been lost by my generation. However, I retain some of my German heritage. For example, the gold ring on my finger is inscribed, "Gott Schuetze Dich". It was given to me by my father at the time of my bar mitzvah. My father had received a similar ring from his father, and all of my children have received them from me. I moved it from one hand to the other at the time of my marriage.

I got to know many of my German relatives when they came to the United States in the 1930s with my parents' help after enduring the horrors of the Third Reich. Unfortunately, some of them never escaped. Over the years, however, I have become interested in tracing my German roots and learning more about my family history. Although I had been in Germany many times before, my visit here seven ago was specifically to find out as much information as possible about my German ancestors. As I traveled throughout the country, in each one of the communities where my ancestors had lived, I found many Germans who had committed themselves to investigating, recovering, restoring, and publishing things of Jewish interest in their own communities. This was a tremendous help in the search for my own roots. I was astonished by the number of people who had devoted themselves to such activities, and when I went home and talked with Jewish friends, I learned that my experiences were typical. Throughout Germany, there has been an extraordinary amount of volunteer work done by individuals who just think it is the right thing for Germans to do and expect no reward or recognition. Unfortunately, the U.S. news media thoroughly covers Neo-Nazi activities in Germany, but it rarely covers the good deeds and dedication of Germans. For example, every American newspaper carried page 1 headlines when a few Neo-Nazis desecrated the Weissensee cemetery, but there was almost no coverage in the U.S. media the next year when over 200,000 Germans marched from Centrum Judaicum to Brandenburg gate on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. We hope these awards will help change the perception created when the media focuses only on the negative.

We are pleased to recognize the outstanding contributions of the awardees. At the end of today's ceremony, we will have given out 26 awards, but this is still only the tip of the iceberg. Furthermore, to our surprise, most of the nominators have been Jewish survivors. These people escaped from the horror of the Third Reich, but still want to show their appreciation to worthy Germans who have done so much to remember the past and to build the future.

These awards are intended to do three things: first, to honor individuals here in Germany's capital and in their own communities; second, to make other Germans aware of the outstanding work that is being done by dedicated Germans; and third, to make the rest of the world, especially Jews, aware of the thousands of highly motivated volunteers who have felt that the preservation of local Jewish history is their way of making up for Germany's horrible past. Understanding and dealing constructive with the past is allowing Germany to build a brighter future and welcome an ever-increasing number of Jewish residents in its own land.

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