Trump Skips Ghetto Monument On Warsaw Trip — Jewish Leaders Slam ‘Slight’
The Monument to the Ghetto Heroes commemorates the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — Leaders of Polish Jews criticized President Donald Trump for not including a stop at a monument for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the itinerary of his visit to Poland.
The rebuke Wednesday by Polish Chief rabbi Michael Schudrich, Anna Chipczynska, the president of Jewish Community of Warsaw, and Leslaw Piszewski, the president of Union of Jewish Communities of Poland, came in a joint statement. In it, the undersigned called the absence of a presidential visit to the Monument to the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto a “slight.”
According to the statement’s authors, “ever since the fall of Communism in 1989, all U.S. presidents and vice presidents visiting Warsaw had made a point of visiting” that site, representing Americans “who had played such a central role in bringing down Fascism,” at a “universal commemoration of the victims of the Shoah, and condemnation of its perpetrators.”
Trump landed in Poland Wednesday ahead of the G20 meeting in Germany later this week. He will commemorate the horrors of World War II in Poland, his aides told The Washington Post, on Thursday, when he is scheduled to deliver a speech at the city’s Warsaw Uprising Monument on Krasinski Square.
That monument celebrates the acts of Polish resistance fighters, not Jews.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
