From today's Indystar:
The Indiana House voted 91-0 this morning to require that public schools teach students about the horrors of the h0Ɩ0cαųst, during which more than 6 million Jєωs were slaughtered by the nαzιs.
House Bill 1059, authored by Rep. Clyde Kersey, D-Terre Haute, was inspired by Eva Mozes Kor, a 72-year-old Terre Haute woman who survived the h0Ɩ0cαųst and built a museum dedicated to it in that western Indiana city.
The bill requires high school U.S. history classes to include study of the h0Ɩ0cαųst.
Kersey recounted Kor's story to his colleagues. She and her twin sister and mother were taken from their Romanian home to Auschwitz, a cσncєnтrαтισn cαмρ established by the nαzιs in Poland, in 1943. Only Eva survived.
"I'm a firm believer in the idea that if you don't learn the lessons of history, you are bound to repeat them," Kersey said.
House Minority Leader Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis and a co-sponsor of the bill, also urged support. He noted that his father served in Gen. George Patton's 7th Army and was an eyewitness to the horrific conditions found at Dachau, a cσncєnтrαтισn cαмρ in Germany.
He noted that such eyewitnesses are becoming rare, as those who survived those camps or liberated them are dying. For the first time, he noted, there are no World War II combat veterans in the Indiana legislature.
With some in the world denying that the h0Ɩ0cαųst ever occurred, he said, it is appropriate for Indiana to require its students to learn that it did.
"They must know, so it never happens again," Bosma said.