Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on Yom Ha'Shoah to honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. In the 1940's, the Nazi regime murdered six million innocent human beings in an attempt to wipe out the entire Jewish community.

It is of the utmost importance that we continue to reflect upon this tragedy and teach our children about this horrific event, so that we fully understand the importance of embracing our common humanity, so that we recognize the universality of human dignity, and so that we prevent genocide from ever occurring again.

In the first few years of the Nazi regime, Jews were harassed and humiliated in every imaginable way to tear away at their basic human dignity.

This denial of their human dignity and humanity culminated in the death camps, where mass murder was accomplished with a factory-like efficiency that shocks the soul.

Facing a totalitarian state intent on genocide and war, several Jewish underground organizations found the strength to create resistance movements. In the Warsaw Ghetto, these groups launched an uprising that lasted over a month against the entrenched Nazi war machine. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising inspired other uprisings across Europe, including in the Bialystok and Minsk ghettos and in the Treblinka and Sobibor death camps.

The indomitable resilience of the human spirit was also demonstrated in the aftermath of the Holocaust when Jews recreated their lives, rebuilt their families and their culture. This rebirth is epitomized by the creation of the first independent Jewish state in our modern era--the state of Israel.

In Israel, Yom Ha'Shoah is marked by the sound of a siren, which calls for two minutes of silence. Two minutes when an entire country stands in silent reflection.

I ask all of my colleagues to join with me in observing the lives that have been lost, in honoring the survivors, and in recommitting ourselves to ensuring that such a tragedy is never repeated again.