White Plains, NY — We join the world in marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, honoring the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism.

On January 27, 1945, when Russian forces liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp, they were shocked at the carnage that they witnessed there and at other Nazi death camps.  But it didn’t happen overnight. The Nazis’ “Final Solution” was an incremental and insidious process that evolved as the world looked on  -- initially with dismissal and disbelief, and ultimately with action and horror.

Today, we bow our heads in memory and sorrow. We will never forget the six million Jews and the other victims who perished in that reign of terror.  But we must do more than just remember. We must also vow to confront anti-Semitism, racism, religious bigotry, persecution relating to sexual orientation, and other kinds of hatred in the here and now.

Because one of the lessons of the Holocaust is this -- when we allow hatred to fester, to gather strength in our culture, to gain support in our institutions, the cruelest, most devastating and deadliest outcomes are possible.

Let us never forget, and let us never allow it to happen again.