Statement by the President in Memory
of the Victims of the Holocaust

President Bush participating in a memorial ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance. In the background (right to left), Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, President Shimon Peres, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council Joseph (Tommy) Lapid. Yad Vashem Photo

WASHINGTON --(BW)-- On the third International Day of Commemoration, we remember and mourn the victims of the Holocaust.

I was deeply moved by my recent visit to Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Museum. Sixty-three years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must continue to educate ourselves about the lessons of the Holocaust, and honor those whose lives were taken as a result of a totalitarian ideology that embraced a national policy of violent hatred, bigotry, and extermination. It is also our responsibility to honor the survivors and those courageous souls who refused to be bystanders, and instead risked their own lives to try to save the Nazis' intended victims.

Remembering the victims, heroes, and lessons of the Holocaust remains important today. We must continue to condemn the resurgence of anti-Semitism, that same virulent intolerance that led to the Holocaust, and we must combat bigotry and hatred in all forms, in America and abroad. Today provides a sobering reminder that evil exists and a call that when we find evil we must resist it.

May God bless the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. And may we never forget.