Morton A. Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) released the following statement:
We, at ZOA, know and appreciate that President Donald Trump is a great friend and supporter of America’s greatest ally, the Jewish State of Israel and the Jewish people. We also know that he was the Grand Marshall at NYC’s Israel day parade and has an orthodox Jewish daughter and grandchildren attending an orthodox day school. Nevertheless, especially as a child of holocaust survivors, I and ZOA are compelled to express our chagrin and deep pain at President Trump, in his Holocaust Remembrance Day Message, omitting any mention of anti-Semitism and the six million Jews who were targeted and murdered by the German Nazi regime and others.
I myself was born in a displaced persons camp in Gunzberg, Germany, and lost dozens of members of my own family to Germany’s monstrous genocide of the Jewish people. I lost most of my many aunts, uncles, cousins, and three of my grandparents. My father, from the Carpathian Mountain area of Czechoslovakia (same as Elie Wiesel), was a survivor of Auschwitz who lost his entire family. My mother was forcefully transferred from her home in Tomaszów Lubelski, Poland to Siberia, enduring a horrific life there, and lost most of her 13 brothers and sisters and the rest of her family.
Commentary Magazine editor John Podhoretz wrote, “The final solution was aimed solely at the Jews. The Holocaust was about the Jews. There was no proud way to offer a remembrance of the Holocaust that does not reflect that simple, awful world historical fact. To universalize it by saying ‘all those who suffered,’ is to scrub the Holocaust of its meaning. “
As Elie Wiesel frequently stated,”while not all victims were Jews, all Jews were victims.” Thus we were especially shocked by the disgraceful statement by Chief of Staff Reince Priebus proclaiming on Meet The Press,when asked about the conspicuous omission of Jews from the Holocaust Statement, “I don’t regret the words, Chuck [Todd].”
ZOA hopes that president Trump will direct his staff and COS Reince Priebus to immediately rectify this painful omission.