Mayor de Blasio Honors Holocaust Survivors on Yom HaShoah, Vows to Keep Fighting anti-Semitism

By Yehudit Garmaise

   Mayor Bill de Blasio took a few minutes today, which is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, to pay tribute to the tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors in New York City.

    “New York City has the distinction that more Jewish people live within the city limits than in any other city in the world: even more than Tel Aviv or Jerusalem,” said Mayor de Blasio during his press conference. “And New York City is the home to more Holocaust survivors than anyplace outside of Israel."

   “We remember these Holocaust survivors constantly,” said the mayor, who also spoke about the city’s “dedicated, focused effort to get them vaccinated and to protect them,” along with the Claims Conference, the Jewish Community Relations Council, and other organizations, whom he thanked for “their tremendous partnership.”

   In addition to making the mayor “realize how much we have to do together, how much we have to fight hate in all its forms,” in recent visits to special vaccination sites that have, so far, provided shots to 2,700 Holocaust survivors, Mayor de Blasio was inspired to hear “amazing stories of strength, resilience, and survival” from three strong, upbeat women who survived the war.

   “I spoke with a woman,” Mayor de Blasio described, “Celia Jankowitz: 97 years old. She survived Auschwitz,” the mayor said.  “We had an amazing conversation full of faith and energy. She is so happy to be alive, happy that people are helping her. She kept her faith even after she survived the horrors of Auschwitz.

   “I met Sarah Teichman, who survived the Bergen-Belsen camp. The same thing: full of life and energy and hope. I met Fredrica Chabris, who survived only because her mother took her out of the Warsaw ghetto in a potato sack as a small child.”

   Yom HaShoah, Mayor de Blasio said, reminds us, “How much we have to be there for those who have suffered from the Holocaust and how we have to fight the scourge of anti-Semitism with all our hearts, all the time.

   “Anti-Semitism is still way too strong in this country and in this world.”

Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.