Schwarzenegger attends Holocaust Remembrance event
California governor recalls stories his mother told him about Holocaust as a teenager at Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in Los Angeles
Schwarzenegger shared stories about the Holocaust that his mother told him as a youngster growing up in Austria.
"She told me of bodies she saw lying on the side of the road, shot to death because they were Jews," he recalled. "Another time, she saw bodies hanging from the trees in our state park.
"This monument is a reminder of the terrible and tragic destruction of the Holocaust. Its symbols help us to remember the 6 million Jews who were murdered and the inhumane conditions they suffered at the hands of the Nazis."
Ceremony at the Weisenthal Center in Los Angeles (Photo: Weisenthal Center)
The lessons of the Holocaust are all the more relevant today as Iran calls for Israel's destruction and anti-Semitism is on the rise in the world, Danoch said.
First Arab honored
In a separate event at the Wiesenthal Center's Tolerance Museum in the city, over 500 community activists, students and Holocaust survivors joined Mayor Villaraigosa at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony during which a Tunisian Muslim was posthumously honored for saving Jews during the Holocaust.
Khaled Abdelwahhab, a Tunisian citizen who rescued 24 Jews, including the family of Jacob and Odette Boukris, Jews who lived in Tunisia during the Holocaust, became the first Arab to be named by a Jewish organization as a “Righteous Among the Nations.” He has been nominated for formal recognition by Yad Vashem.
At the event, Faiza Abdul Wahab, daughter of Khaled Abdelwahhab met for the first time Nadia Bijaoui, daughter of Anny Boukris. Tunisian Ambassador to the United States, Mohamed Nejib Hachana, who traveled from Washington, D.C. and Robert Satloff, whose book Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands, first brought this courageous story to light, attended the event.
