Nazis machined gunned down 35 of his relatives, including his great-grandmother, on the porch of their western Ukrainian home during World War II, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) recalled in Tel Aviv on Sunday.
So, he said, “I had an obligation to be here” and to assure Israelis, “you are not alone.”
He recalled his family’s tragedy and referenced his Jewish background during a press conference to discuss Hamas's assault on southern Israel on October 7, in which over 1,300 civilians and soldiers were killed.
“There are no words for the horror that happened last Saturday [October 7], it shook me to my core, I think about it all the time,” he said.
“As the first Jewish majority leader and the highest-ranking Jewish elected official ever in America, I felt I had to be here. I wanted to be here,” he said.
Bipartisan delegation meets with victims of Hamas attack, Israeli leaders
Schumer and the four-member bipartisan delegation to Israel met with victims of the attack as well as with top Israeli officials such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog.
“The viciousness of this attack, it was just wrenching,” Schumer emphasized. “Young women raped and murdered side by side, babies throats slit in front of their parents and then they shoot the parents,” he said.
“I see the pictures of the little children and I think what if this happened to my four-year-old grandson,” Schumer recalled.
“It was the most Jews killed in a single day since the Holocaust,” Schumer said, adding that Hamas killed more Jews on October 7, than the Nazis killed during Kristallnacht when rioters looted and and attacked Jews in Germany in 1938.
Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) introduced herself as the “only Jewish woman in the Senate, the only Jewish mother in the Senate. A former Synagogue President, and a steadfast supporter of Israel,” Rosen said.
“Israel lives in the hearts of all Jewish people” and after the events of October 7th, “our hearts have been shattered,” she said.
"As Jews, we know that never again means right now," Rosen stated. “Americans will never abandon the Jewish state," she explained, ending with, “Am Yisrael Chai.”