TRANSCRIPT: Leader Schumer Remarks From Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony Honoring New Yorker Benjamin Ferencz

Washington, D.C. - Today, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) attended a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony honoring Benjamin Ferencez. Mr. Ferencz was one of the United States' lead prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials after escaping antisemitic persecution in Hungary as a child and growing up in the tenement in the Lower East side of New York City. As antisemitism is on the rise, Leader Schumer emphasized that, now more than ever, it's our responsibility to remember the Holocaust and combat the same hate that fueled it. Below are Leader Schumer's remarks from the event:

Starting last night, around the world, we are observing Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Growing up, my parents ensured I never forgot what happened to my great grandmother and her family when the Nazis occupied their town in Galicia in 1941. The SS forced her to gather her children and grandchildren on her porch. When the Nazis ordered them to follow, she refused. She said: "I won't leave." And the SS machine gunned all 17 of them down. They were 17 of the more than six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

Today, during Yom HaShoah, we remember all of them and renew our solemn pledge: never again.

We remember not only the horrors of the Holocaust but also those who stood up for human dignity eight decades ago. To mourn and to fight for justice in the same breath - that is the Jewish way. Later today in the Capitol, we will honor with the highest civilian award Congress can bestow - someone who personified the fight against the evils of the Holocaust. We will award the great New Yorker Benjamin Ferencz the Congressional Gold Medal.

His family escaped antisemitic persecution in Hungary as a child in the 1920s. Like so many generations of the poor, homeless, tempest-tossed, huddled masses before them, he and his family started a new life in New York City. He went from living in a basement tenement on the Lower East Side to becoming one of the United States' lead prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials. He oversaw prosecution of the Nazis' mobile SS death squads that murdered more than a million people in Eastern Europe.

It was a true honor to lead the legislation to award him the Congressional Gold Medal. I thank my colleagues ­- Senator Gillibrand, Senator Wicker, Congresswomen Lois Frankel, and Congressman Joe Wilson - and all the other advocates who championed this important effort. In honoring Ben, we send an unmistakable message that antisemitism has no place in this world, that Congress will never forget the lessons of the Holocaust, and that Ben's fight for justice deserves not only celebration but emulation.

In his opening statement at Nuremberg, Ben Ferencz said of the Holocaust: "we cannot shut our eyes to a fact ominous and full of foreboding for all of mankind."

We must continue to keep our eyes open today. We must at a time when the human connection to that tragedy grows ever thinner, with fewer than 200,000 living Holocaust survivors left worldwide today. We must at a time when a recent survey found that one in three Americans reported seeing Holocaust denial and distortion on social media in the past year. And we must at a time when, according to the American Jewish Committee, roughly one in three American Jews reported being the personal target of an antisemitic incident at least once last year.

The responsibility to remember the Holocaust and to combat the same antisemitic hate that fueled it falls on all of us.

We must remember how the Holocaust happened - how the Nazis took power, how too many stood silent in the face of evil, and how the death of democracy in Europe enabled the death of six million Jews. The poisons of fascism and antisemitism come from the same vial. The only antidote is to call out and condemn antisemitism whenever and wherever it rears its head. We must allow it no safe harbor. That is why we will continue to keep our eyes open. That is why we continue to remember.

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