Jared and Ivanka Tour Holocaust Museum With His Parents

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By Daniel J. Solomon March 9, 2017

Right as President Trump signed a revised version of his “Muslim ban,” first daughter Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner took a private tour of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, visiting the D.C. site with Kushner’s parents Charles and Seryl.

Their visit came amid several waves of bomb threats directed against Jewish institutions nationwide and criticism of the Trump White House for not more forcefully denouncing those incidents. Rae Kushner, Jared Kushner’s grandmother, was a shaping force in the founding of the USHMM, and the museum retains a copy of her oral testimony, in which she discusses the plight of Jewish refugees during World War II.

That history has led some to fault Kushner, a senior White House adviser, for not opposing his father-in-law’s “Muslim ban.” Others argue that Jews fleeing the Nazis then and today’s Muslim refugees are different, which means Kushner can not oppose the ban and still honor his grandmother. The president himself is said to be pondering a visit to the museum.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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