The Town of Yorktown held its annual Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony on April 16, 2026, at the town hall. The event featured keynote remarks by Holocaust survivor Joseph Gossler, speeches from local and state officials, and a candle-lighting ceremony. The program focused on the importance of memory, education, and vigilance against hatred and anti-Semitism.
Possible, and I will thank his chauffeur for the for the day, Jay uh Gusick from the Sons of the American Legion and went down to the city to pick him and his son up today. Um we do have some officials in the room that I've seen. I see uh former supervisor Michael Grace, uh I see uh assemblywoman Dana Levenberg, I saw uh councilman uh Alan Gilbert, we have our town clerk, Diana Quast. Uh I know there's some others that are going to be coming in. Uh it's a unfortunately busy time for everyone right now, because sometimes we do need to slow down and remember. Uh is your mom here? No, she's on the bench, right. So um, but uh thank thank you all because it is important that our elected officials become a part of this because these are where some of these decisions from the past come back to haunt us when our officials don't remember them. So it is so important for us too. Um never forget. This has been the theme of each of our remembrances. We say the words, we tell the stories, but we must also ask ourselves are we making a difference? I believe we are. I know what this experience has meant to me, and I have seen its impact on others, but remembering must be more than words. It must shape how we see the world and how we respond to it. After my second remembrance event, I had a life-changing experience. On Father's Day of 2018, I visited Dachau concentration camp in Germany with both my wife Carol and my daughter Kerry. Uh, even today I could still feel the heaviness and the despair that was in the air there. Uh I left in tears, overwhelmed by emotions that I could not control. That is something I will never forget. What struck me most was not only what happened inside the camp, but what happened outside of it. People living nearby planted shrubs to block their view. They chose not to see. They accepted rhetoric over reality, and in that silence, hatred was allowed to grow. It is how it begins, not with action, but with indifference. Today we see echoes of that danger. We see rhetoric that dehumanizes, we see narratives built on distortion and falsehood, and we sat see how easily people can be drawn into them, not because they are inherently hateful, but because hatred is taught, reinforced, and normalized over time. That is why remembrance matters. In November, Carol and I joined a group of elected officials on an educational trip to Israel. We met with leaders and organizations working towards uh coexistence, people committed to bridging divides in one of the most complex regions in the world. We visited the hand-in-hand school where Jewish and Arab students learn side by side. We met with members of Roots, where Israelis and Palestinians are working day by day to build understanding. And we stood at the site of the Nova Festival and met with families still living with the trauma of October 7th. What became clear is this progress is fragile and it requires constant effort. What was equally striking were the reactions from some back home. Comments made without knowledge, filled with assumption and hostility. That too is a reminder of how quickly misunderstandings can take hold. We are again living in a time of global conflict and rising tension. And when we speak about vigilance against hatred, we cannot ignore what is happening today in places like Iran. We see people in the streets here in America protesting actions taken against the Iran Iranian regime, some even going as far as to praise it, and I struggle to understand how that perspective takes hold when the reality is so well documented. This is a regime that has for decades ruled through fear, imprisoning, torturing, and killing its own people for speaking out. Tens of thousands of Iranians have lost their lives simply for demanding basic human rights, for wanting a future defined by freedom rather than oppression. This is not abstract, this is not political theory. This is real. And looking around the room, 90% of us lived through the 70s and what happened and the brutalization of this regime. And we were reminded of that reality here in our own community just a few days ago. Talia Pearson, who will be speaking tonight, actually helped with her organization to bring in extraordinary program to Yorktown featuring Natalie Sanandiji, a young Iranian-American Jewish woman whose family spans both Iran and Israel. Natalie was at the Nova Festival on October 7th. She told her story and how she lived through the horror. But what struck me even more was what she shared about her life since then.