Liberal statement on Yom HaShoah

April 28, 2014

OTTAWA AND AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU – The Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, Justin Trudeau, today issued the following statement on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day:

“Today, on Yom HaShoah, all Canadians stand with the Jewish community in remembering the atrocities committed during the Holocaust and the millions of innocent people who lost their lives.

“Our determination to never again allow such evil to occur remains resolute. We must never forget this dark period in human history.

“On behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada and our Parliamentary Caucus, I join in honouring the memories of the millions who lost their lives in the Holocaust and paying tribute to the survivors amongst us.”

Liberal Rights, Freedoms, and International Justice Critic, Irwin Cotler, continued:

“Today is an historic moment of remembrance and reminder – the 70th anniversary of the Shoah of Hungarian Jews – of horrors too terrible to be believed but not too terrible to have happened. Some 500,000 Hungarian Jews were deported in cattle trains to the death camps in Auschwitz in six weeks.

“This Yom HaShoah here in Auschwitz, I have the honour to light a memorial torch with the great-niece of Canada’s first honourary citizen, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who showed how one person with the compassion to care and the courage to act can transform history.

“Never again will we be silent in the face of evil; never again will we be indifferent to racism and anti-Semitism; never again will we be bystanders to hate or to the pain of the vulnerable.”