Press Releases

Idaho Leaders Must Say, “Never Again”

April 30, 2008

Boise, Idaho – U.S. Senate candidate Larry LaRocco will join fellow Idahoans on Thursday to say, “Never again.” For former U.S. Rep. LaRocco, the dark time in our world’s history known as the Holocaust is personal.

LaRocco will attend a ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Week at noon on Thursday, May 1, in the Ada County Courthouse in Boise. He will join other Idaho leaders to remember six million Jewish people murdered during WWII.

“Our leaders need to understand the full historical impact of the Holocaust,” said LaRocco.

The slaughter of innocents, the scope of horror, became personal for LaRocco when he and his wife Chris visited death camps in the 1960s. The couple spoke with former inmates less than 20 years after liberation. The LaRoccos visited Dachau in Germany, Mauthausen in Austria, and Auschwitz in Poland—places that combined to murder an estimated 1.2 million to 1.8 million people, 90 percent of whom were Jews.

“It is not enough for Idaho’s leaders to talk about atrocities committed during WWII,” LaRocco said. “We must honor the lives of the victims. We must remember their deaths. We must stop genocide where find it in the world today.”

The LaRoccos have also journeyed to Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. And Mr. LaRocco remembers feeling a chill after reading the inscription over Auschwitz death camp’s main gate: “Arbeit Macht Frei”—Work Will Make You Free.

“You just make a commitment right on the spot that this will never happen again,” LaRocco said.

LaRocco, a Vietnam-era veteran, extends his thanks to Max Fullmer, a WWII veteran from Idaho who helped liberate Dachau. Fullmer will attend the ceremony.