U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) issued the below statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“Yom HaShoah is a day of remembrance, a time to pause and reflect about a period in history where man’s inhumanity to his fellow man reached an unfathomable level. Six million Jews and millions of other victims perished at the hands of Nazi murderers and died in unspeakable ways. One-third of worldwide Jewry was killed during those dark days, destroying families and forever altering history. We will never know if a future life-saving scientist, soul-stirring musician, or crusading human rights advocate died in a Nazi death camp, never having had the potential to make immeasurable contributions to the collective lives of humanity.

“Every year, as Yom HaShoah is commemorated, there are fewer survivors living in our communities who serve as the first-hand witnesses to the Holocaust. But their legacies live on through their children and grandchildren, and through all of us who pledge to “Never Again” allow such horrors to envelop our world. That is why as the ugliness of anti-Semitism re-emerges in Europe and beyond, we as a global community must speak out and stand up against such cruelty and bigotry. That is our charge that we must fulfill to help heal our world and make this home we live in a better, more just place.”

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