Holocaust Remembrance Day

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY -- (House of Representatives - May 05, 2005)

Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in remembrance of and in mourning for the millions who perished in the Shoah, the Holocaust, the most systematic and brutal persecution of a people ever perpetrated in human history.

We grieve for all human suffering and misery. The death of one is not more significant because of his or her race or their creed. But there were so many ones lost in that time. And not just individuals, whole families, whole villages, an entire way of life in many cases. Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, these countries will never regain the vitality they lost when they lost their Jewish people.

We grieve today not just for the Jewish deaths; Jews were not the only ones to perish in the Holocaust. This atrocity was visited upon Gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, Catholics, Africans, trade-unionists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Protestant Pastors and anyone who opposed the Reich.

The Holocaust was and is an offense, not only to the victims, their families and their friends, but to humanity. Some demonize the Nazi brutality, calling it inhuman. But I think the fact that the Holocaust was a human event makes it all the more terrible. And it makes our obligation to prevent such a thing from ever happening again even more essential and pressing.

Pastor Niemoller famously reflected on his inaction at the time of the Holocaust:

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First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for me.

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On this day of remembrance, let us pledge that this will not be our legacy.

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