New York Gov. Kathy Hochul approved Wednesday a package of bills meant to aid the survivors of the Holocaust as well as boost education in New York schools. 

Hochul at a ceremony at the Museum of Jewish Heritage said the measures were needed to support the state's 40,000 survivors of the Holocaust amid a rise in anti-Semitic attacks and online radicalization. 

"I think it's really timely that we talk about the past, but what's really going  on in the present," Hochul said. "That's something we've had to encounter with the rise of anti-Semitism and the radicalization of people."

The measures approved requiring the state Education Department to survey New York schools in order to assess the quality and standards of Holocaust education in the state. State lawmakers had pushed the measure in the wake of polling that has shown many adults are ignorant of the circumstances of the genocide. 

"That is our best hope to stop the penitration of radicalization," Hochul said. 

Hochul also approved measures that require banks to waive fees for Holocaust reparation payments as well as having museums to better track and identify art looted during the Holocaust. 

Many survivors live in poverty in New York. 

"It's our duty to protect these people and ensure their later lives are nothing like their earlier lives," Hochul said. "I take this hate personally, because I feel wounded when someone is harmed in our state."