White House proclaims Holocaust Remembrance Week

The White House has proclaimed April 28 to May 5 Holocaust Remembrance Week, US President Donald Trump announced this weekend.

“On Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and during this week of solemn remembrance, we honor the six million Jewish men, women, and children who were brutally murdered by the Nazi regime,” Trump said in a declaration. “We also remember the Roma and Sinti, persons with disabilities, Poles and Slavic ethnic groups, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and persons who were targeted based on their sexual orientation, all of whom were targeted and killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.”

Holocaust Remembrance Day will be commemorated in Israel and the Jewish world over Wednesday night and Thursday.

“The Holocaust will forever haunt the conscience of humanity,” he continued. “Unchecked evil and hatred led to unprecedented depravity and destruction.  The Nazi regime sought to exterminate entire populations of those they deemed undesirable. Millions of Jewish people were forced into ghettos and slave labor camps in which starvation, widespread disease, and senseless brutality took a devastating toll. Many of those who survived were sent to concentration and death camps, in which millions of Jews were murdered in gas chambers and other facilities built for daily human massacre.”

Trump explained that in Hebrew, the day commemorating victims of the Holocaust is called “Yom HaShoah Ve-Hagevurah,” which means the “Day of [Remembrance of] the Holocaust and the Heroism.”

He went on to say that although we honor the victims of the Holocaust, “we also celebrate the survivors and daring rescuers who overcame horrific injustices, endless nights of darkness, and daunting odds.”

“Survivors of the Holocaust endured firsthand hatred and evil that sought to extinguish human life, dignity, and freedom,” the US president highlighted. |When the heroic American and Allied forces liberated them, the survivors had every right to sorrow and bitterness, but instead, they inspired all of humanity with their unbreakable spirit and the prevailing power of hope and forgiveness over horror and hatred.

Trump pointed out that Jewish-Austrian Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal endured five different labor and concentration camps during his lifetime and despite this he lived to the age of 96 where he “spent his life showing the world the depravity of the Nazis so that the haunting truths of the Holocaust would never fade.”

“In his memoirs, he recounted being told by a Nazi guard that it was worthless to tell the story of the Holocaust because no one would ever believe such things were possible,” he added.

On Yom HaShoah, and during this week of remembrance, Trump said that together with the United States, they join Simon Wiesenthal “in refuting his captor and strongly reaffirm our everlasting commitment to honor the victims and survivors of the Holocaust,” who, he said, “through their courageous testimony, fulfill the righteous duty never to forget.  We vow never to remain silent or indifferent in the face of evil.”

He made it clear that the American government and its citizens will continue to advance human rights, combat antisemitism, and dispel all forms of hatred in every part of the world with the utmost devotion.

In the declaration, Trump appealed to the American people to observe the Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust from April 28 through May 5, 2019, as well as “the solemn anniversary of the liberation of Nazi death camps, with appropriate study, prayers and commemoration, and to honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution by remembering the lessons of this atrocity so that it is never repeated.”