where... my almost my entire family was murdered

along with about 350.000 other Polish Jews.

And people sometimes will ask me

whether that experience had anything to do with my work for animals,

it didn't have a little to do with my work for animals,

it had everything to do with my work for animals.

Throughout that ordeal, before we find ourselves

by the slogan, "Never again"

it was an article of faith that our sacrifice would not be in vain.

That the world would be so shocked by what was done to us.

That they would never allow atrocities like these to be perpetrated again.

In 1975, after I emigrated to the United states,

I happened to visit a slaughterhouse,

where I saw very frightened animals

subjected to horrendous crowding conditions,

while awaiting their deaths.

Just as my family members were in the notorious Treblinka death camp.

I saw the same efficient and emotionless killing routine as in Treblinka.

I saw the neat piles of hearts, hooves and other body parts

just so reminiscent of the piles of Jewish hair, glasses, and shoes in Treblinka.

And I recall the allusion by famed Yiddish writer, Isaac Bashevis Singer that,

"For the animals, all men are Nazis and life is an eternal Treblinka"

and then it finally dawned on me,

"Never again"

is not about what others should not do to us

"Never again" means that

we must never again perpetrate mass atrocities against other living beings.

That we must never again raise animals for food or for any other form of exploitation

and that's when I became an activist for animal rights.