Sean Patrick Maloney: “Mr. Speaker I rise to join people around the world who are commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Ha-Shoah, and…”

“Mr. Speaker I rise to join people around the world who are commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Ha-Shoah, and mourning the six million people who were murdered simply because they happened to be Jewish. It is important that we take time each year to remind ourselves of the devastating horror of a world in which insanity ruled and it was possible for the Nazis to try to eradicate an entire people from the face of the Earth. The horror of the Holocaust comes not merely from the fact that massive numbers of people were murdered--in truth the total civilian body count in World War II was enormous, including roughly 20 million Russians and 10 million Chinese. There have been other conflicts in which vast numbers of civilians have died. The true horror of the Holocaust is that a modern nation used organized, efficient, systematic, scientific methods to try to wipe out a minority population. What compounds the horror is that the Nazis brought their peculiar brand of death with them as they swept through Europe and rounded up Jews in occupied countries. We must not forget that the world watched silently and allowed the Holocaust to happen. The Nazis could never have been as effective at targeting Jews if it were not for the collaboration of local populations. Tens of thousands of people assisted the Nazis in identifying Jews and herding them to the concentration camps and gas chambers.…”