SE Nebraska News

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Congressman Mike Flood led Republicans on the House floor as lawmakers debated H.R. 537, the “Forgotten Heroes of the Holocaust Congressional Gold Medal Act.” H.R. 537 would award the Congressional Gold Medal to 60 diplomats posthumously in recognition of their brave and vital service in saving Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Video of the remarks can be found by clicking here. News outlets are welcome to use the footage for their reporting purposes. The full text is below.

“I rise in support of H.R. 537, a bill that will posthumously award the Congressional Gold Medal to the Forgotten Heroes of the Holocaust.

Madam Speaker, on September 1, 1939, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis began their invasion of Europe, which started World War II and threw humanity into what would become one of our darkest periods in history.

The Nazis sought the mass extermination of the Jewish people and wasted no time carrying out their vile plan.

They hunted, rounded up, and sent Jews to concentration camps across Europe to be murdered in a state-sponsored genocide that we now refer to as the Holocaust.

However, a handful of diplomats from around the world took quick and heroic action to save Jews attempting to flee Europe.

They resisted the antisemitic Nazi agenda, risking their families, careers, and lives to help innocent Jewish people flee persecution.

Despite some receiving direct orders not to help the Jewish population, these diplomats issued passports and travel visas; set up safehouses and getaways to hide adults and children; and communicated with local communities to help fleeing Jews escape by traveling underground to safety.

Because of the actions of these diplomats, hundreds of thousands of Jewish families in Europe escaped death at the hands of Hitler’s Nazi regime.

Although they were not the only ones who risked their lives to aid the Jewish community, today we celebrate sixty of those diplomats and honor their lives and actions with a Congressional Gold Medal.

Sadly, antisemitism is an endemic and unrelenting scourge on history, rearing its ugly head even today just as it did 80 years ago during World War II.

H.R. 537 honors those sixty diplomats who valiantly defied that systemic hatred by bravely doing what was right to stand up for not only the Jewish community but all mankind.

It is my hope that their courage will continue to inspire Americans today.

Madam Speaker, I support this bill; I urge my colleagues to support it as well. I reserve the balance of my time.”