Governor’s Mansion hosts Holocaust Remembrance Day

More than 100 people including numerous elected officials gathered at the Governor’s Mansion on Wednesday for the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony.

Gov. Steve Sisolak, who promised to continue the annual event begun eight years ago by Gov. Brian Sandoval, said the Holocaust was, “the darkest moment in Jewish history.”

He said the death of 6 million members of the Jewish population and more than 5 million other people at the hands of the Nazi regime can never be forgotten and that we must work even hardest to eradicate prejudice and bigotry. He said the key to remembering the lives of those victims is the few remaining survivors, a half dozen of which were in attendance.

Sisolak said that means remembering the non-Jewish population who were killed.

“Always remember and never forget,” he said.

One of those survivors, Henry Kronberg, who described himself as 99-years young, credited then Gen. Dwight Eisenhower for making those memories possible by ordering extensive pictures of the death camps taken as the Allies liberated them and who made residents of nearby towns go through the camps and bury the bodies of the dead.

“I and the few of us left are the witnesses,” Kronberg said.

The ceremony concluded with the lighting of seven candles — one for each million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and one for all those other non-Jewish victims.