Obama’s Yom HaShoah Message

By JTA April 12, 2010

President Obama called on people to honor the memory of Holocaust victims in a statement released in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“We must recommit ourselves to honoring the memories of all the victims and ensuring that they remain a part of our collective memory… We must never tolerate the hateful stereotypes and prejudice against the Jewish people that tragically continues to this day,” Obama said in a statement released Monday that touched on familiar themes.

President Obama toured Buchenwald in June 2009 with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Elie Wiesel, and survivor Bertrand Herz and visited Yad Vashem while a presidential candidate in 2008.

Wrote Obama of his visits: “I bore witness to the horrors of anti-Semitism and the capacity for evil represented by the Nazis’ campaign to annihilate the Jewish people and so many others. But even at places like Buchenwald, the dignity and courage of those who endured the horrors of the Holocaust remind us of humanity’s capacity for decency and compassion.”

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