SENATE MEMORIAL 47

52nd legislature - STATE OF NEW MEXICO - first session, 2015

INTRODUCED BY

Michael S. Sanchez

A MEMORIAL

COMMEMORATING THE SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION OF THE AUSCHWITZ CONCENTRATION CAMP.

     WHEREAS, January 27, 2015 marked the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, set up in 1940 by occupying Nazi forces; and

     WHEREAS, between 1940 and 1945, over one million people, mostly Jewish, were killed at Auschwitz; and

     WHEREAS, in addition to Jews, many Gypsies, Russians and Poles from Nazi-occupied Europe were transported to Auschwitz on overcrowded cattle trains; and

     WHEREAS, upon arriving at Auschwitz, those capable of hard work were separated from the others; and

     WHEREAS, the elderly and children were sent to the gas chambers, a process known as "selection"; and

     WHEREAS, survivors of the "selection" were stripped of their clothes, belongings and identity, tattooed with a number on their arms and dressed in striped uniforms; and

     WHEREAS, On January 27, 1945, Red Army soldiers arrived at Auschwitz, where they discovered seven thousand emaciated inmates who had been left behind by fleeing Nazis; and

     WHEREAS, the horror of the atrocities carried out at the Auschwitz concentration camp shocked the world; and

     WHEREAS, on the seventieth anniversary of the liberation, world leaders joined approximately three hundred Auschwitz Holocaust survivors to pay tribute to those who had died and to urge the world to never again be bystanders to atrocities like those committed at Auschwitz;

     NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that the bravery of Holocaust survivors, and the memory of those who died, be honored on the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that it is the desire of the senate that the world never again allow atrocities like those of the Holocaust to occur; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be transmitted to the synagogues of New Mexico.

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