Today in Sacramento I am delivering a keynote address to a special session of our Assembly and Senate.
Today is the annual Holocaust Memorial Observance. Many survivors and their families as well as camp liberators will be in attendance. They are living testimony to this horror that happened in the 20th Century. Genocide. Targeting the Jews, Gays and Lesbians, Jehovah Witnesses, and the physically and mentally handicapped and the Roma people also known as Gypsies. Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis. And I am proud that California will remember. Officially we will remember all those who perished at the hands of the Nazis. I am proud that California will honor the survivors and honor those who in service to our country fought so valiantly to defeat such evil.
I will have the honor of giving the invocation today and a keynote address and then along with the Governor and the Speaker attend the reception to honor the survivors and the veterans. I look forward to meeting the vets and the survivors and listening to their stories.
There are still so many Holocaust deniers in the world. They write vicious lies that this horror never happened. That the Jews made it up. Even the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spews this lie whenever he can.
So I am honored to speak (thank you Assembly members Ira Ruskin (Los Altos) and Marty Block (San Diego)) and honored to learn the survivors’ and veterans’ stories so they can become mine and I can share them with others.
Tomorrow I will publish my remarks about today in Sacramento.
May the memory of the righteous live for a blessing.