Governor Hochul Signs Legislation to Honor & Support Holocaust Survivors in Educational, Cultural & Financial Institutions
Edited by: TJVNews.com
On Wednesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a legislative package to honor and support Holocaust survivors in educational, cultural, and financial institutions. The legislative package will help ensure schools are providing high-quality Holocaust education, require museums to acknowledge art stolen by the Nazi regime, and require the New York State Department of Financial Services to publish a list of financial institutions that voluntarily waive fees for Holocaust reparation payments.
While visiting the Holocaust exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park in lower Manhattan, Governor Hochul said: “We’re going to be signing legislation that we believe is going to be significant in our continued efforts to erase anti-Semitism, a journey that everyone in this room cares deeply about.”
She also voiced her feelings after touring the museum. “You cannot walk through these exhibits and not just feel so deeply as a human being what individuals, fellow human beings had to endure. I’ve been to some of the concentration camps as I toured Europe, and it just never leaves you. It’s a horror. “
Governor Hochul added: “I just saw an exhibit. It’s the newest exhibit called What Hate Can Do, What Hate Can Do. And it’s sad that we even have to have that conversation in 2022, but I think it’s really, really timely that we talk about not just the past, but what is really going on in the present.
That’s an awakening we’ve all had to encounter as we see the specter of anti-Semitism on the rise, and white supremacy and the radicalization of people. Whether it’s the chanting in Charlottesville, what happened in my hometown at Buffalo, when an individual is radicalized on the internet to go three hours away and shatter the lives of 10 fellow neighbors of mine in Buffalo because of the color of their skin. So, there is hatred out there and it’s spreading, and that is why we talk about it here in this place. But in this place, it’s not enough. This has to be taught in our schools and we have to make sure that’s actually happening.
We gather here to pay tribute to the 6 million lives that are lost. And when you walk through and you see the faces of people holding babies, and celebrating family milestones, and doing their jobs, and you know they never survived. They didn’t live the normal span of life. It was cut short. And we are obligated to honor, but also to remember, to truly remember that these are not just statistics, they’re not names on a wall, they’re true human beings. And while it may look different today, that hatred is still out there. It’s still out there and it hasn’t gone away. And that is what’s so hurtful. It’s still targeting Jews across the world and yes, in our own state because we’ve had 570 anti-Semitic crimes perpetrated against Jewish New Yorkers this year. That’s not in the last decade, the last five years. That is this year alone. And according to the ADL, New York State has led the nation in anti-Semitic incidents in 2021, up 24 percent from the year before, which is already a high year from the year before.
So, it’s a very large, a very disturbing increase. And meanwhile, we’ve found that 22 percent of American Jews are afraid to wear outward signature emblems of their face and their heritage, their story because it’ll mark them as Jewish and make them a target for a crime.
And I know this because I went to a synagogue in Flatbush right after there had been – I went to a synagogue, then a yeshiva. I went to the classroom and talked to a young man who came up to me and said to me, he was about 10 or 12 years old, he said, “Governor, my friend says I shouldn’t wear my yarmulke anymore because I’m going to be attacked on the streets. What do you think about that?” I said, “No. No, young man. You wear that, you wear that proudly because that’s what your ancestors would want you to do, and we’ll protect you. We’ll do everything we can in our power as the adults, as elected leaders, and as members of law enforcement, and as community activists who tell the stories and honor the traditions. You continue to do that, so someday your children will understand, and their children will understand and this is how we pass this on.”
And so, as Governor of a state with 40,000 Holocaust survivors and the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, I take this hatred personally because I feel wounded as a human being to know that someone else is harmed in our state. And I’ll continue to fight back with the full force of our government, not just to combat it and talk about it, but to criminalize it, prosecute the perpetrators and stop it in its tracks.
And it was in this very space last October, we announced $43 million in critical infrastructure funding. I’m not talking about building roads and bridges. I’m talking about building security. Security in our vulnerable institutions. Again, the yeshivas, the synagogues, places people gather, to places at the most risk of hate crime attacks based on what we’ve seen already.
And we also allocated $25 million specifically to boost safety, security, and cameras and other ways we can protect. We’re also strengthening the laws, the laws that have been on the books against those that commit heinous crimes to be more accountable. That is something we did when we addressed the reform of the bail reform in our last budget because hate crimes had been swept out of the crimes covered that would be bail eligible. And I said, that cannot be.
At a time when we’re seeing an escalation in hate crimes, how can we say that someone who perpetrates one would simply get an appearance ticket and be able to go back until their court date? So they can go do it again and again and again? We stopped that with changes in the law that went into effect on May 9th following the passage of our budget.
We also in our budget, increased the reimbursement cap for victims to repair or replace essential property lost as a result of a crime from $500 to $2,500. And as I mentioned, the influence of the Buffalo shooting, I issued an executive order that directed every single community, every county in the State of New York, to develop plans to identify and confront the threats of domestic terrorism, including those that are ethnically, religiously, or racially motivated. I directed the head of Homeland Security, Commissioner Jackie Bray, who’s doing an extraordinary job – I was just with her speaking to firefighters in neighboring Westchester County an hour ago. She’s extraordinary. And yesterday, Jackie and I were on a training session for all these local partners, as we talked about how they should stand up threat assessment teams and management of those.
So, we’re putting 10 million out to local communities, so they can be the eyes and ears on the ground to help us thwart white supremacy and domestic terrorism because it’s not a slogan. The reality is there is no place for hate in our state, especially anti-Semitism or hate of any kind. And when it starts here, we all have a role to play in eradicating it. “
