Senator Sanders - Holocaust Remembrance

While speaking on the PBS series, Finding Your Roots, Senator Bernie Sanders showed his more vulnerable side as he talked about a relative who died defying the Nazis in World War II. In the clip, the Jewish senator is visibly moved as he discusses the relative with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates.

“I’m proud of his courage, and willingly going to his own death in order to protect innocent people,” Sanders says. “So I’m very, very proud that I have a family member who showed that type of courage and decency.”

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported many of Sanders's relatives perished in the Holocaust. His father, Eli, grew up in Slopnice Poland before immigrating to the United States at the age of 17. Almost all of Poland’s Jewish population—90 percent—were systematically eradicated during the Holocaust.

Sanders rarely discusses his Jewish identity in depth, but talks in the show about how the horrors of the Holocaust motivated him to become involved in politics. He said his own career was borne out of a desire to “prevent the descent of humanity.”

“It just makes us realize how hard we have got to work to not descend into this type of barbarity and to create a world where people can love each other,” he said. “That’s what this reinforces in me.”