CNN’s Pamela Brown Overcome With Emotion After Holocaust Remembrance Day Segment

CNN’s Pamela Brown was overcome with emotion Thursday while reacting to images of children lost during the Second World War in a segment on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The network aired images of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual National Commemoration of the Days of Remembrance Ceremony.

At Emancipation Hall at the Capitol, victims of Germany’s persecution of Jews of all ages were displayed to commemorate them 80 years after Allied Forces ended Hitler’s campaign of genocide.

CNN took a few moments to air comments from public officials and victims who looked back at the unprecedented mass murder of the estimated six million European Jews in death camps.

Brown could not contain her tears after the segment while she discussed it with network host Wolf Blitzer.

Blitzer looked to his colleague and said, “Pamela, as we watch this, it’s so emotional.”

Fighting tears, Brown replied, “Yeah. I mean, just seeing this. Sorry. Seeing those pictures of those kids.”

Blitzer shared his family’s story, one that has been shaped by the Holocaust.

“It’s really, really – and I grew up as a son of Holocaust survivors,” he said. “So those stories were told to me as a kid growing up. And I was named after my two grandfathers, who were both killed during the Holocaust. My mother’s father was Wolf. My dad’s father was Isaac. I’m Wolf Isaac Blitzer.”

Brown, still fighting tears, replied, “I love that. You’re carrying on quite the legacy, Wolf.”

Blitzer documented a trip to Auschwitz in 2023 with CNN’s Dana Bash, writing:

I thought I knew what was in store for me visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau. I had been there some years back when I was working on a report for CNN about my family history – I’m the child of Holocaust survivors. I had heard my parents, both Polish Jews, speak of their painful experiences surviving the war. But I never knew my grandparents because all four of them were rounded up by the Nazis and killed during the Holocaust.

But this time was different. As our expert guide showed us the Auschwitz gas chamber, I mentioned that I had learned a few years earlier that my dad’s parents were killed at Auschwitz. Our guide said that Polish Jews were largely killed in the very gas chamber we were standing in. He pointed out the gas chamber and the adjacent crematorium, where their bodies were burned and the remains then discarded in a pit. It was the first time I realized that I was standing right where my paternal grandparents had been murdered. Tears came to my eyes.

Watch above via CNN.