Mr. Speaker, today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and with deep love, I honour my grandmother.
I adored my grandmother, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp and a woman of courage who gave up my father into hiding during the war, which saved his life. It was a fortunate choice, a choice that graced me with having him as a father. He was the only surviving child on both sides of my paternal family after the war, with five survivors in total. As a mother, I cannot imagine having to make that choice, but she did, in all of her courage, kindness, wisdom and strength.
To all individuals who lost loved ones during the war whom they may have known, to all those who feel a loss due to those relatives they were never blessed to know but whom they cherish in their blood memory, I extend my heart, strength and hope for a better, kinder, more gentle world for all today as we strive to ensure human rights and dignity for all.
I remember. We remember.