Mr. Speaker, Yom Hashoah is a day of profound reflection, not only for Jewish communities in Canada and around the world, but for all Canadians and all members of the human race.
Holocaust Remembrance Day provides the global community with an opportunity to remember the unthinkable evil of the Holocaust, to reject the hatred and inhumanity that fuelled it, as well as the indifference that allowed it to happen. It is the responsibility of all of us to ensure that this dark moment in human history is never forgotten.
Today, my Liberal colleague, the member for Mount Royal, is in Auschwitz to mark this solemn day of remembrance by lighting a memorial torch with the grandniece of Raoul Wallenberg, and to address the March of the Living.
Today I urge all Canadians to recommit that we will never allow such horrors to be repeated. We will not hate. In the words of Holocaust survivor and Noble Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness”.