Steve Rothman: “I rise today to commemorate Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, the annual observance of the mass genocide…”

“I rise today to commemorate Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, the annual observance of the mass genocide perpetrated in the mid-twentieth century by Nazi Germany, the most evil tyranny in the annals of human history. On Sunday, May 8th, we mark the sixtieth anniversary of V-E Day, when the combined might of the Allied Forces finally ended forever the murderous regime of Adolf Hitler and his brutal henchmen and brought the curtain down on the European theater of World War II. Nevertheless, the Nazi dictatorship already had succeeded in deliberately murdering more than six million Jews and countless other people, in particular gypsies, persons with mental or physical disabilities, and those perceived to have a different sexual orientation or set of political beliefs. They achieved this terrible end through a nefarious network of secret police, a perverted legal process, a barbarous system of concentration camps that doubled as human extermination factories--and the tacit and often active participation of many, many others from a wide variety of backgrounds and national origins. We observe Holocaust Remembrance Day in part to honor the memory of those men, women, and children who perished in this tragedy unparalleled in the course of human events. We observe Holocaust Remembrance Day to pay tribute to the courage and suffering of so many who lost their lives.…”