Ontario Provincial Parliament, Holocaust Memorial Day, April 21, 2010
Ms. Cheri DiNovo (NDP): "I'm here to honour the members from Yad Vashem who are sitting in the gallery and who are here to commemorate the horror of the Holocaust and to celebrate the courage of the survivors.
I'm here, as I stand every year, to say the only three words that anybody with any ethical credibility can say as a Christian, Gentile Canadian: I am sorry. I am sorry that out of 45 million Christians during Nazi Germany, only 150,000 became part of the Confessing Church, and of those 150,000, only 3,000 actually saw as part of their mandate the protection of their Jewish brothers and sisters. I think of my brother Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who lost his life; of Karl Barth, the great theologian of the 20th century, who stood as one with the Jewish people and paid dearly for it.
I
also say "I'm sorry" as a Canadian-that rejected Jews at our borders,
that brought in anti-Semitic laws, municipally, provincially and
federally.
Finally, I am sorry that anti-Semitism is still in our midst. I think of the words of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, who said that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
My
prayers are with you. My love is with you. The hope is with you that,
as you come back year after year, we say this in a quieter and quieter
voice because it's less of our reality."
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