[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 79 (Tuesday, May 7, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3376-S3377]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Anti-Semitism

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, in 1945, Muriel Knox Doherty, of the 
Royal Australian Air Force Nursing Service, was assigned to the Bergen-
Belsen Concentration Camp to provide relief for Holocaust survivors. 
She preserved her experience in hundreds of letters, which contained 
passages like this:

       On arrival at Belsen, [the prisoners] lay in the open and 
     were beaten with iron bars. [The] witness' friend was in bed 
     3 days as a result of these beatings.

  ``The only reason for this treatment,'' she wrote, ``was that they 
were Jews.''
  ``The only reason for this treatment is that they were Jews.''
  Yesterday, Jews around the world observed Yom HaShoah--the Holocaust 
Remembrance Day. I spoke at Temple Emanu-El in New York about it.
  This year, Yom HaShoah comes at an especially painful moment for the 
Jewish people. Seven months ago, over 1,200 innocents were brutally 
murdered by Hamas in the worst attack against Jews since the Holocaust. 
In the months since, anti-Semitism has swept our country and the world 
in ways not seen in generations. Sadly, we see the poison of anti-
Semitism amidst some of the protests happening on college campuses 
today.

  This unprecedented rise in anti-Semitism is why I came to the Senate 
floor last November--to speak at length about the fear that has been 
growing in the hearts and minds of every Jewish person since October 7. 
I believe we all have an obligation to call out anti-Semitism wherever 
we see it arise, be it from the right or from the left.
  As I forcefully said in my speech, if anti-Semitism is not 
repudiated, if it isn't forcefully called out whenever and wherever it 
arises, it will metastasize into something worse. That is what I wanted 
to emphasize in my speech.
  So, today, I applaud President Biden for taking another strong, 
decisive step to fight anti-Semitism at the Federal level, with new 
steps aimed at fighting anti-Semitism in our communities, online, and 
toward Jewish students.
  Among other actions, the President has directed the Department of 
Education to issue new guidance for college campuses to protect Jewish 
students and students of all backgrounds so that our universities 
remain safe havens to learn and grow.
  When a Jewish student cannot walk through their quad without fear of 
harassment or ridicule or something far worse, we have a duty to 
respond. When swastikas are spray-painted on Jewish gravestones and 
bomb threats are made against synagogues, it demands action from the 
government to keep people safe. If ``never again'' is to have any 
meaning, all of us must own the duty of combating anti-Semitism 
together at every level of society.
  Here in the Senate, I will continue to work with Democrats and 
Republicans

[[Page S3377]]

to protect Jewish synagogues, schools, and organizations of all kinds 
from violence and hate. It is why I fought to increase funding for the 
Nonprofit Security Grant Fund Program, which provides money for 
synagogues and shuls and schools and other nonprofit religious 
organizations, whether they be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, or 
anything else, to protect themselves against vandalism and violence and 
all forms of hate.
  As I said in my speech on the floor last November, the best way we 
can work together against anti-Semitism is to preserve the history of 
the Jewish experience, to tell the truth about the horrors that took 
place 80 years ago. Only then can we truly honor the memories of the 
innocent dead. Only then we can be sure that ``the torturer never 
tortures again.''