[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 1]
[House]
[Page 1220]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   THE WORLD NEEDS RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

  (Mrs. McMORRIS RODGERS asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Mrs. McMORRIS RODGERS. Madam Speaker, it is with a heavy heart that I 
join in remembering one of the darkest stains on the history of the 
world.
  Today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we pay homage to 
the lives that were lost and remember the freedom that triumphed the 
day the death camps were liberated. On this day 70 years ago, thousands 
of prisoners were liberated at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where 
over a million Jews lost their lives.
  In all, more than 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, wiping out 
a part of European culture that existed for more than a thousand years. 
Today, Europe confronts a new wave of anti-Semitism as we witnessed in 
the murders recently at the kosher market in Paris.
  What the world needs is religious freedom and the promotion of faith 
as a force for good. We also need strong military alliances that 
suppress racial hatred and genocide whenever it raises its ugly head.
  After the death camps were liberated, Jews still confronted an anti-
Semitic Europe, and they made their way to Israel. When they fought for 
the war of independence in 1948, half the soldiers were survivors from 
the death camps.
  Today, when we remember the victims, let us also remember that it was 
the liberation of the survivors that helped found a new state: the 
state of tolerance, democracy, and freedom that Israel so proudly 
embodies.

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