"Those of us who are in the positions of public trust, particularly on this committee and beyond, I hope will continue to remember… and to understand the totality of man's inhumanity to their fellow men, the extent that can take place," Foreign Affairs Ranking Democrat Robert Menendez said on Wednesday.
The resolution commemorated the 70th anniversary of the day when Soviet forces entered the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland and liberated 7,000 prisoners that remained in the camp.
The resolution calls on the US government and society to remember the lives lost at Auschwitz, and during the Holocaust on the whole, and to continue toward tolerance, to put "an end to all genocide and persecution."
Menendez stressed the importance of passing the resolution to address "the issue of antisemitism, that it's rearing its ugly head once again."
Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27, 1945. According to various estimates, between 1.5 million and four million people died at the concentration camp.
The Nazi camp, the biggest and most notable symbol of the Holocaust, now houses the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
