The Department of Homeland Security joined individuals and organizations in the U.S. and worldwide in observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27.
The day is designated to remember the victims of the Holocaust, which resulted in more than 6 million Jews being killed by Hitler's Nazis.
"Holocaust Remembrance Day is recognized one day each year," Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a Jan. 27 statement. "We know that remembrance is every day, as is the work that must accompany it."
Mayorkas has personal experience with the trauma inflicted by the Holocaust. His parents had to flee their home countries to escape the brutality and genocide inflicted by Hitler.
"My mother had lived this history. As a girl, she and her parents fled from Romania to France, and on to Cuba, because they could not make it safely to Israel or the United States," the DHS secretary said. "Her father lost his parents, brothers, and other family members in the Holocaust. Through the years in the United States, my mother stayed in touch with her two cousins who survived the camps and had made it to Israel alone."
For many, the Holocaust has meant a lasting trauma throughout the generations.
"As you might expect, my mother's childhood profoundly shaped her approach to a young child away from home through the night," Mayorkas said. "When our fellow elementary school students went to sleepaway camps and had sleepovers with friends, my siblings, and I did not. My mother taught us the meaning and experience of independence in different ways."
