Official portrait of President Donald J. Trump. Image by White House

(JTA) — President Donald Trump proclaimed this week the Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust, ahead of his planned speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Trump made the proclamation on Monday, which is observed as Holocaust Remembrance Day. Trump’s statement 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.”

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The statement, as well as a pre-recorded speech given by Trump to the World Jewish Congress on Sunday, marked an evolution in his rhetoric from just three months ago, when his administration’s remembrance of the Holocaust failed to mention Jews and he seemingly appeared reluctant at first to condemn anti-Semitism.

Every president since the Holocaust Museum opened in 1993 has participated in Days of Remembrance events.

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