Never Again Education Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHNEIDER. Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his leadership in moving this bill forward and my colleagues in the House for passing this bill later this evening.
I rise today in support of H.R. 943, the Never Again Education Act, of which I am proud to be a cosponsor.
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi's largest death camp and genocidal machine that killed more than 6 million Jewish men, women, and children.
It also marks the continuation of our ongoing responsibility to keep a promise made after the Holocaust: ``never again,'' never again to allow the evils unleashed by anti-Semitism, extremism, and hatred to fester, never again to stand idly by in the face of genocide.
Last week, I had the solemn honor to visit Auschwitz with a bipartisan congressional delegation led by Speaker Pelosi. Standing before the gas chambers and furnaces, seeing what seemed like infinite piles of personal belongings taken from the victims, endless piles of hair of the people murdered at Auschwitz, I felt a deep responsibility to fulfill the promise once again.
Yet, today, in this moment, we are witnessing an increase in anti- Semitism around the world and specifically here in the United States. In 2018, a gunman walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and killed 11 people. It was the worst anti-Semitic attack in our Nation's history, but it was not the last. A synagogue in Poway, a kosher grocery in New Jersey, and a Hanukkah celebration in Muncie-- across the country are increasing numbers of verbal and physical assaults, vandalism, and other acts of anti-Jewish hate. The numbers are truly horrifying.
Here we are in this moment, 75 years since the horrors of the Holocaust came into full view, close to a time when there will be no survivors left to tell their story.
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Mr. SCHNEIDER. Yet, anti-Semitism is just as dangerous today as it was then, and a key lesson of the Holocaust is more important than ever, that in the face of a dramatic rise in anti-Semitism, we must not--indeed, cannot--remain silent.
This act is a step toward that aim by empowering the Holocaust Memorial Museum to develop and distribute national education materials for teachers across the Nation. Only by standing strong in our fight against these threats in our time and on our watch can we live up to the sacred promise of ``never again.''
Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes.''
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