January 27, 2015

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand released the following statement today to commemorate the 70 ^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau:

“On the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, we remember the more than one million innocent Europeans, mostly Jewish, who perished at that camp because they had the wrong name, the wrong face, or the wrong God.

“We must use this anniversary today to warn against a new wave of anti-Semitism – a movement that is fueled by the worrying combination of prejudice, apathy, and amnesia.

“In the not-so-distant past, the world watched and did nothing as a movement just like this one went unchecked and mutated from rhetoric to genocide. And today, this hatred is returning with a new mask, but the same evil intentions; to suggest otherwise is irresponsible.

“There is no excuse, in the year 2015, for any person to be unaware that the Holocaust happened. We have a responsibility to ensure that ‘Never Again’ is real.

“To honor the victims of the Holocaust, and to ensure that nothing like it ever happens again, I urge everyone to speak out now against all forms of anti-Semitism, prejudice, apathy, and amnesia.”