WASHINGTON (EJP)—U.S. President Donald Trump has signed a proclamation designating a week of remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust.
The White House released the proclamation on Monday, which marked Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, ahead of Trump’s planned speech at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Trump’s proclamation condemned the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews as well as other minorities.
“The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and attempted annihilation of European Jewry by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. By the end of World War II, six million Jews had been brutally slaughtered,” read the statement, adding that other targeted groups included “Roma (Gypsies), persons with mental and physical disabilities, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Slavs and other peoples of Europe, gays, and political opponents.”
The president’s statement reiterates America’s support for Israel.
“We support the Jewish diaspora and the State of Israel as we fulfill our duty to remember the victims, honor their memory and their lives, and celebrate humanity’s victory over tyranny and evil.’’
Trump’s proclamation also commemorated the US and Allied forces’ liberation of Nazi concentration camps.
“During this week in 1945, American and Allied forces liberated the concentration camp at Dachau and other Nazi death camps, laying bare to the world the unconscionable horror of the Holocaust. We must remain vigilant against hateful ideologies and indifference,” his statement said. “Every generation must learn and apply the lessons of the Holocaust so that such horror, atrocity, and genocide never again occur.”
In a video message for the opening of the World Jewish Congress plenary assembly in New York, President Trump pledged to stand firm against hatred of Jews and terrorism: “We must stamp out prejudice and anti-Semitism everywhere it is found. We must defeat terrorism, and we must not ignore the threats of a regime that talks openly of Israel’s destruction. We cannot let that ever even be thought of."