The White House Statement On The Holocaust Was A Case Of Classic Denialism
White House Lawn
On Friday, The White House released their annual statement in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day. The memoriam, instituted by the UN in 2005 in an effort to curb Holocaust denial, is annually commemorated on the anniversary of Auschwitz-Berkinau’s liberation by the Red Army in 1945.
Official White House statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day on the 72nd anniversary of Auschwitz-Berkinau’s liberation.
This statement from the President Trump White House failed to give any mention of the Jewish people. This is in stark contrast with President Obama and President Bush’s Holocaust Remembrance statements, who either mentioned Jews directly or anti-Semitism.
Trump’s Chief of Staff Reince Priebus went on Meet the Press on Sunday and defended the statement, asserting: “I don’t regret the words. I mean, everyone’s suffering in the Holocaust, including, obviously, all of the Jewish people.”
After this attempted defense, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) also went on Meet the Press and called the administration out for Holocaust denialism:
“The final solution was about the slaughter of Jews, we have to remember this. This is what Holocaust denial is. It’s either to deny that it happened, or many Holocaust deniers acknowledge, ‘Oh, yeah, people were killed. But it was a lot of innocent people. Jews weren’t targeted.’ The fact that they did that and imposed this religious test against Muslims in the executive orders on the same day — this is not a coincidence….I think all of these things are happening together, when you have the chief political adviser in the White House, Steve Bannon, who is connected with a news organization that traffics in white supremacy and anti-Semitism, and they put out a Holocaust statement that omits any mention of Jews.”
Eleven million men, women, and children, were murdered at the hands of Hitler’s Third Reich from 1933–1945. Concentration camps such as Auschwitz-Berkinau, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, and Treblinka, carried out the intended goal of extinction of the Jewish people. To that end, six million Jews were killed.
The other five million encompassed those who stood in the way of the Third Reich’s mission to restore the Aryan race and issue an ethnic cleansing throughout Europe. Those who stood in the way included Christians, the disabled, Gypsies, Poles, Slavs, Jewish sympathizers, communists, and homosexuals.
The White House statement omits the danger of anti-Semitism, the horrors of hatred, and diminishes the outright hatred for those who stand in the way of evil agendas. “Evil,” as Hitler defined for us, looks to extinguish religions and nationalities from the face of the earth.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum released a statement:
Official statement from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
While not directly implicating the White House’s statement, the Holocaust Museum’s statement is a pithy, yet strong defense as to why continued reminders of the Holocaust are vital to moving forward as a tolerant people.
The primary goal of the Holocaust was to implement “The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.” Constructing a new narrative telling otherwise is denialism at best and revisionist history at worst.
