Carroll: “On Yom Hashoah, Do Not Forget That Hate Still Exists”

During a Yom Hashoah remembrance service at the Old State Capitol on Thursday, Jonathan Carroll, D-Buffalo Grove, spoke about the importance of reflecting on the past to combat hateful elements still present.

 “Yom Hashoah will always remain as an important reminder to the devastation and destruction the Holocaust caused not only to Jews like myself, but many other people that didn’t fit the ‘mold’,” said Carroll.  I would like to say in 2018 we’re past the hate. We’re past the ignorance. But I would be lying. It still exists.”

Yom Hashoah is the world-wide day commemorating the approximately six million Jews who perished during the Holocaust as a result of the actions carried out by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, and for the Jewish resistance in that period. Remembrance ceremonies are held all over the world. Even still, a disturbing report released recently by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany found that 11 percent of U.S. adults and more than one-fifth of millennials either haven’t heard of, or are not sure if they have heard of, the Holocaust.

“When I took the oath of office back in October, I wanted my children to see that there are good people in politics,” said Carroll. “There are good people who stand up for our most vulnerable citizens, who will say enough to the same rhetoric Hitler used in Germany.”