Holocaust Awareness Week Recognized

The General Assembly, after an emotional remembrance of those who suffered under Nazi terror in death camps across Europe, asked Coloradoans to commemorate Holocaust Awareness Week Wednesday.

Rep. Victor Mitchell, R-Castle Pines Village, talked of his visit to Auschwitz in Poland.

"I would say that both my wife and I were forever changed by this experience," Mitchell said. "Going through, walking these grounds, it's really like nothing else I've ever been to. The sheer enormity. It was like a well-run business. They had thought of everything in the most evil and sinister ways."

Rep. Nancy Todd, D-Aurora, urged her colleagues to remember that the Holocaust is both a moment in history and a reminder of human frailty.

"History is only history when we allow it to stay in books," Rep. Nancy Todd, D-Aurora, said. "Teaching young people how to respond to human needs across our world is one of our most important responsibilities."

Others spoke of the imperative to remember the evil embodied by the Nazi effort to exterminate Jews and others.

"We need to tell this story," Rep. Alice Madden, D-Boulder, said. "We need to tell it over and over again."

HJR 1028 was approved unanimously in both the House and Senate.