President Trump took a strong stance against anti-Semitism at a Holocaust remembrance ceremony, denouncing Holocaust deniers and pledging to support Jewish people.
“That is why we are here today: to remember and to bear witness,” the president said in the Capitol Tuesday morning at the Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual Yom Hashoah remembrance ceremony. “Yet even today there are those who want to forget the past. Worse still, there are even those filled with such hate, total hate, that they want to erase the Holocaust from history. Those who deny the Holocaust are an accomplice to this horrible evil.”
The Trump Administration has been criticized for its comments on the Holocaust in the past. In January, Trump’s statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day had no mention of the 6 million Jews that were killed. In April, White House spokesman Sean Spicer incorrectly claimed that Adolf Hitler did not use chemical weapons during World War II and referred to concentration camps as “Holocaust centers.”
But Tuesday Trump referred to “the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people” and addressed Holocaust survivors, saying, “You witnessed evil and what you saw is beyond description, beyond any description.”
“This is my pledge to you,” he said. “We will confront anti-Semitism. We will stamp out prejudice. We will condemn hatred. We will bear witness and we will act. As President of the United States, I will always stand with the Jewish people and I will always stand with our great friend and partner, the state of Israel.”
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