Story highlights Bernie Sanders was asked about the role of faith in his life at Sunday's Democratic presidential debate

The Vermont independent senator said, "I am very proud to be Jewish, and being Jewish is so much of what I am."

(CNN) Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders got personal in discussing his faith Sunday during the CNN Democratic presidential debate, describing how parts of his family were "wiped out" in the Holocaust.

"I am very proud to be Jewish, and being Jewish is so much of what I am," he said at the event in Flint, Michigan. "Look, my father's family was wiped out by Hitler in the Holocaust. I know about what crazy and radical, and extremist politics mean."

He said he remembered being a child and his mother taking him shopping, where they "would see people working in stores who had numbers on their arms because they were in Hitler's concentration camp."

"I am very proud of being Jewish, and that is an essential part of who I am as a human being," he said.

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