By Rebecca Szlechter, JNS
“There are countless lessons of the Holocaust, but one of the strongest ones is what can happen when ordinary people look at hatred with indifference,” Sen. Jacky Rosen told JNS.
On a recent trip to Poland, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) met with representatives of the American Jewish Committee and Krakow Jewish Community Center and with Michael Schudrich, chief rabbi of Poland, the senator told JNS.
The Jewish Democrat also visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Galicia Jewish Museum and the historic Kazimierz Jewish quarter in Kraków.
Rosen told JNS that she heard during her meetings with Jewish leaders “about the impact antisemitism is having on their communities and what efforts have been most effective to combat it.
At Auschwitz, she paid tribute to Holocaust victims and laid a wreath for the Americans at the reconstructed Death Wall.
“The preserved grounds of the concentration and extermination camps at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum stand as a testament to what can happen when hatred is allowed to reach its most evil form,” she told JNS.
Rosen said that unchecked years of discrimination, violence and marginalization preceded the Holocaust.
“There are countless lessons of the Holocaust, but one of the strongest ones is what can happen when ordinary people look at hatred with indifference,” she said.
“This indifference allowed for the murder of six million Jews, as well as millions of others, and it’s why we must recommit ourselves to relearning these lessons and not allowing hatred to go ignored in our country today,” she said.
According to her campaign site, Rosen, before being elected, was “president of Congregation Ner Tamid, Nevada’s largest synagogue.”
“She holds the distinction of being the third female Jewish Senator in U.S. history, as well as the first former synagogue president to serve in the Senate,” the site states. “An outspoken supporter of Israel and combating antisemitism, she is now the co-founder and co-chair of the Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism and the bipartisan Abraham Accords Caucus in the Senate.”
