B-Roll, Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Signs Legislation to Honor and Support Holocaust Survivors in Educational, Cultural, and Financial Institutions

Earlier today, 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.

B-ROLL of Governor Hochul visiting the Holocaust exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on this historic occasion. We're going to be signing legislation that we believe is going to be significant in our continued efforts to erase antisemitism, a journey that everyone in this room cares deeply about. I do want to thank the keepers of the flame in this beautiful building that's been in existence for 25 years. For 25 years, this place has been telling the story, the horror of what has happened in our lifetime, or the lifetimes of our parents or our grandparents. And I'm so grateful for Elyse Buxbaum for her passion that she brings to this. She just took me on, in some sense, a bone-chilling tour. You cannot walk through these exhibits and not just feel so deeply as a human being what individuals, fellow human beings had to endure. So thank you, Elyse. And I promise to come back when I have far more time someday in the future to really experience this. I've been to some of the concentration camps as I toured Europe, and it just never leaves you. It's a horror. Bruce Ratner, thank you for being on this long journey as well. Your vision to help bring us this, this gathering space, this museum in the first place as the Chairman of the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

Celia Kener, we're going to hear from you in a couple of minutes, and this is going to be a heck of a story. I know this, and I thank you for being a woman of dignity and a woman who cares so deeply about sharing what happened to you in order to prevent the evil that you witness from ever affecting another person. So, you're making a real difference in your efforts to go out there as a spokesperson. So, thank you.

We also have a number of bill sponsors. I know a lot of our elected officials are recognized. In the interest of time, I'm going to acknowledge our bill sponsors. Anna Kaplan, thank you for being a real champion on legislation. I'll be mentioning what you worked on in a couple of minutes. Nily Rozic, our Assemblymember, thank you. Chuck Lavine, another bill sponsor. Zellnor Myrie, our Senator and bill sponsor, Simcha Eichenstein, I want to thank him for his sponsorship.

Also, I want to recognize our Borough President, Mark Levine is here. Thank you, Mark Levine and all of our other leaders. But also, we have leaders in Congress. I want to recognize Carolyn Maloney who sponsored the Federal Holocaust Education Bill. I want to thank her for work on that. And to Congressman Jerry Nadler for being the informal Dean of the Jewish Delegation. Both of you have been doing tremendous work and I thank you for that. What we do at the state level is important, but what you do at the federal level has a national impact, and that is making a profound difference.

So, I just saw an exhibit. I'm sure you'll all take the time to do this. 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 antisemitism 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.

So today, 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 antisemitic 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 antisemitic 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 antisemitism or hate of any kind. And when it starts here, we all have a role to play in eradicating it.

We mentioned the Holocaust a number of times. And I can't wait to hear your remarks, Celia. I'm really looking forward to your words. But during World War II, New York was the home to the only Holocaust refugee shelter in the country. Now you have to ask how that happened. The news was out there. Elyse and Bruce and I were looking at some of the exhibits and it talked about all the news that was starting to come out of Europe, a million Jews massacred -- page seven of the New York Times, not even the front page. London Times, page 16. This was going on and the world, especially our own country, failed in its obligation to embrace people who were in need, just like today we're embracing immigrants, migrants in search of a home coming up on buses as we speak. It's who we are as New Yorkers.

But I did go to that one place in the country, Fort Ontario in Oswego. Patti Kenner made sure I go there - is Patti Kenner in the room? Patti Kenner made sure I went there and to showcase what a community with heart can do. And they embraced almost a thousand refugees who were brought here from 1944 until 1946. And I had a chance to talk to people who lived among them and it was an extraordinary experience.

But what that did was say to us that we are the place you come to, we will take care of you. That's who we are. And we're going to continue standing with our Jewish brothers and sisters because we know what happens when people turn a blind eye when people ignore the facts as happened back in the 1940s. Fast forward to today, what are we seeing out there? We're seeing too many disturbing signs and I'll never forget when I had a chance to sit down with 10 women Holocaust survivors. And one of them said to me, unsolicited, she says, "I'm watching the news. I'm watching the news. I'm getting scared. It feels like what happened when I was a little girl starting again." What do you do?" You hug someone almost a hundred years old saying I'm seeing it happening again in the United States of America. This is not Nazi Germany. It's the United States of America.

I don't want the citizens of my state to live in fear ever, ever, so, we will take action in any way, any form, and be tough about it and be as tough as we need to be to say you cannot do this in my state, in our state. And if you have hateful feelings and you can't deal with it, well go somewhere else because we're not going to let you harm people in our state.

So, "never forget" is more than a slogan, it's what we preach. But I want to make sure it's really being taught. Is it really being taught? For almost 30 years, 1994, we've had a law that mandated the Holocaust be taught in our schools. It's great. I don't remember being taught it. I don't know that my kids remember being taught it. And I asked this question a couple of days ago. Well, what does teaching it mean that there is a sentence and a history book when you're learning about World War II and they mentioned it, or is it really taught? Is it just a statistic, 6 million, or do you really tell the true story behind it? How people turned on their neighbors and became so radicalized and they didn't have the internet to do that for them, that's why today is even more dangerous. The mass spread of this is what we've been watching. And I asked the Attorney General after the Buffalo shooting to stand up an outfit that would be helping the state police watch for the signs that are out there, because they're doing it, not in plain sight, but one level below, those dark websites, and we're onto that.

But we're teaching this in schools supposedly, but how is that in 2020, 58 percent of young New Yorkers can't name a single concentration camp? 60 percent were unaware that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Doesn't seem like it sunk in very well, does it? And we're not an outlier, New York's not an outlier. All across the country, Holocaust understanding and knowledge is pitifully low. And at the same time, fascism's on the rise, antisemitism's on the rise, and I'm just saying there might be a correlation.

We need to teach people when they're still young because we cannot have these horrors repeated. And I don't think any babies are born with their kind of hate and their heart. I think about babies a lot. I have a three-month-old grandbaby now. I had a chance to hold her over the weekend. And I look in her face and I'm like, she doesn't know hate. She doesn't know hate. And she can live an entire life of never knowing hate if she's not around forces that teach that to her or that you have an education system, that'll fight back and give the true facts.

And so that's why in a couple of minutes, I'll be signing a bill that directs the Commissioner of Education to survey our school districts, ask the question, what are you really doing? How much are you sharing? What grades, how much, how is the testing going? Are you sure this is penetrating the minds of our young people because that is our best hope to stop the radicalization or the penetration of their hearts with hate that they may be seeing out there from other sources? It's not always from the parents. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. I don't suspect it always is, but their access to the internet, where they can go to those sites. And also what we've identified is - I spend a lot of time with law enforcement - identifying the fact that social media platforms will push out more content the more you seek it. What I'm saying is they have algorithms and this is what we're working on. Trying to get around some federal laws that tie my hands on dealing with social media, but we're working on it.

When someone goes to see the Christchurch massacre or the Tree of Life massacre, they see this online, they get the knowledge of that and they start embracing the radicalization behind it. The algorithm of that social media site will push out even more content. So, this is set up to really allow for the radicalization of people. That can't be the case. So, I'm going to make sure for starters that our schools are properly teaching about the Holocaust as required by law, and to establish plans to deliver these required lessons that may not be taught. And I want to thank Senator Anna Kaplan and Assemblymember Nily Rozic for having the foresight to say, "What is being taught? Is it enough? And let's survey it and find out." Let's give them a round of applause for their effort. We'll make sure all the school districts are compliant.

Also, I have two more bills I'll be signing today to help us never forget. One is that the crimes committed during the Holocaust and its survivors who are still with us today, one is making sure that museums, New York museums— now think about this, that they have to prominently post alongside us along the side of artworks that were stolen during the Nazi era in Europe. They have to give credit. They didn't go buy these somewhere. These were stolen. They're stolen from people who are the rightful owners during this reign of terror. So, let's make - this would be part of another way to involve Holocaust education in everyday lives. When someone goes to a museum and they see that sign, they might make them step back and think, "Wow, this was actually stolen. How did that happen?" Let them ask those questions. So, I want to thank Senator Anna Kaplan once again, and Assemblymember Chuck Lavine for their leadership on this legislation. Let's give them a round of applause. Because studies say over 600,000 paintings were stolen during the Holocaust from Jewish owners in Europe. And that's over 20 percent of the art in Europe at the time. So many of them have been identified, some are still missing, but we're going to make sure that that is not forgotten. And I want to thank you for that.

Also, we have to recommit ourselves to the survivors. We need to do more. And I was at a luncheon with Patti Kenner. We listened to the Voice of the Holocaust Survivors and I was struck by a statistic. This was a number of years ago. 40 percent of New York Holocaust survivors live in poverty. That is shocking. That is shocking. After what they've been through as children, losing family members, their lives are just turned upside down from the very beginning when they should be living a time of innocence. And they end up, the other end of their life, they're comfortable, they're living with other friends and socializing, or they have to worry about getting food on their table and can they afford their medicine. A civilized society, or at least a civilized state like New York, won't let that happen any longer.

I announced money for Holocaust survivors, almost $3 million to be distributed to organizations when I was at the Y Boro Park, and that's a critical social service for our providers. And that's the day when I mentioned, I just had a chance to sit down and listen to these survivors. And one of them did tell me, I'll never forget it. She said, "I feel like my whole childhood was stolen from me." We all look back. We think about our children, our own childhoods, the memories that are part of who we are." When your memories, when you're 80, 90, 100 years old, or a stolen childhood, you don't even know what you missed. The cruelty never stops. The cruelty of that experience never seems to end. So it's our duty to protect these people. It truly is. And ensure that their later lives heard nothing like their early lives. And we're taking another step, we're signing a bill that codifies the department of financial services practice. And I want to recognize our Superintendent Adrienne Harris, give her a round of applause. She's doing a great job. Superintendent of Financial Services. Let's publicize the New York banks that will waive the fees associated with Holocaust reparation payments. And I want to thank Senator Zellnor Myrie for his leadership on this, and Assemblymember Simcha. I want to thank both of you for seeing an issue here, that there are some banks doing the right thing, let people know who they are, and the rest of you, you better catch up. That's all I can say. So, survivors and their heirs should not have to be paying processing fees and wire transfer fees for all the money that they're owed. And we know which banks are out there, making sure that they don't have to — the banks will not be profiting off the pain of these individuals. Let's just get that out there.

So I am so grateful to all the educators who will be helping us on this journey in schools, also the advocates who bring ideas to us, the legislators, who really just don't stop until we continue in our pursuit to righting a horrific wrong of the past. We'll never fully achieve that, it's not possible, but I will know that every day we're going to make a difference. And I just want to say, to the 1.77 [million] Jews who call New York home, thank you for calling New York home. Don't go anywhere else, there's no better state. Florida's overrated. I know I shouldn't say this, but look at the governor. I'll just start at the top-down. Getting in trouble, have to stay on script.

But I will tell you, as long as I'm your Governor, as long as I have a breath in my body, I will stand to protect this community and honor the story and the people that had to endure the Holocaust. And with that, I want to bring up one of those survivors who used her life experience to help make sure that no one else has to endure the unthinkable. Celia Kener was born in Poland in 1935. It was a year before my dad was born. My dad's still doing well. That's right. She was just a little girl when Germans invaded in 1941, and her father was drafted by the Russian army. The rest of the family had to live in a ghetto. And your mother was sent to a labor camp, and your mom promised you to a Catholic couple, I understand because she didn't think you'd survive. But amazingly, you were reunited with your mom after the Russians liberated the family. And then, your father escaped.

I'll let you tell your story, but you came here in 1949 and you've been with this ever since, not just living here, but finding a way to use your experience and sharing it with countless others. So today, she's a volunteer with the Speakers Bureau of the Museum of Jewish History, giving her time, her story to others. And with that is my sincere privilege to introduce Celia Kener.