[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 44, Number 4 (Monday, February 4, 2008)]
[Page 114]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Statement on the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the 
Victims of the Holocaust

January 27, 2008

    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.