Statement on the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust,
January 26, 2007

On the second International Day of Commemoration, we remember and mourn the victims of the Holocaust.

Sixty-two years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must continue to educate ourselves about the lessons of the Holocaust and honor those whose lives were taken as a result of a racist ideology that embraced a national policy of violent hatred and bigotry. It is also our responsibility to honor the survivors and those courageous souls who refused to be bystanders and instead risked their lives to try and save the Nazis’ intended victims.

Remembering the victims, heroes, and lessons of the Holocaust is particularly important today as Holocaust denial continues, urged on by the Iranian regime, which perversely seeks to call into question the historical fact of the Nazis’ campaign of mass murder. We must continue to condemn the resurgence of anti-Semitism, that same virulent intolerance that led to the Holocaust, and we must combat bigotry and hatred in all their forms, in America and abroad.

May God bless the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. And may we never forget.