Sam Brownback: “in light of the upcoming Holocaust Remembrance Day, I want to pay tribute to the men, women, and children who suffered…”

“in light of the upcoming Holocaust Remembrance Day, I want to pay tribute to the men, women, and children who suffered and were murdered at the hands of the Nazis in the death camps across Europe. In 1951, the Israeli Knesset designated an official day on the Hebrew calendar, called Yom ha-Shoah, to commemorate the Shoah or Holocaust. This important day falls on May 5th. ``Shoah'' is the Hebrew word meaning ``catastrophe,'' which speaks to the tragic destruction of nearly the entirety of European Jewry during World War II. Perhaps no other place has been so linked to the Shoah than Auschwitz, the liberation of which was solemnly marked earlier this year. Auschwitz now symbolizes the horror suffered by millions in an expansive network of camps and sub-camps that stretched throughout much of Europe. Millions of people were deported to these camps throughout the war. Many were summarily executed. Others were worked to death. Some were subjected to sadistic medical experimentation. The death camp at Auschwitz was at the heart of the ``final solution,'' the slaughter of innocents for no other reason than that they were Jews. In addition, Poles, Roma and other minorities were transported to Auschwitz and elsewhere for elimination. To put this staggering human suffering into some scale, the equivalent of roughly half the current population of my home State of Kansas was murdered at Auschwitz alone.…”