The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has criticized Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for delivering a commemorative statement for International Holocaust Remembrance Day in which he failed to mention Jews. In his 111-word statement, Prime Minister Trudeau referred to the “atrocities of the Nazi regime” but mentioned only the “victims” of the Shoah. 

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “Prime Minister Trudeau’s statement was simply offensive in its omission of even a single mention of the identity of the Shoah’s six million victims, the Jews.

“Indeed, his statement was so general that, but for its reference to ‘millions of victims,’ it could have been issued, word-for word, about dozens of other, much lesser atrocities.

“The Shoah is unique for a simple, stark reason: there is no other case in which the aim was to literally destroy the life of every member in the world of the target group. 

“This doesn’t mean that no other people have suffered terrible massacres and ethnic cleansing. Look at the murder of over a million Armenians by Turkey during World War One. But the Turks didn’t aim to murder every Armenian. There were parts of the Ottoman Empire where Armenians were left untouched.

“There is a uniquely sinister and evil aim behind the Shoah that makes it stand apart. Had the Nazis and their allies succeed in conquering the Allied powers, they would have murdered all their Jews as well, not only the Jews they managed to murder in their conquest of Europe.

“In that context, how is it possible that the Canadian Prime Minister failed to mention the Jews in a statement about the Shoah?

“Prime Minister Trudeau diminished the murderous anti-Semitism of the Nazis and the relentless anti-Semitism of today by subsuming the Shoah into merely one among other cases of ‘hate, prejudice, and discrimination.’”

“This represents an unacceptable distortion and de-Judaization of the Shoah.”