WASHINGTON — President Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said Sunday that the White House has no regrets that a presidential statement on the Holocaust didn’t include a clear reference to the 6 million Jews who were killed.
Priebus said he doesn’t regret the words, adding that ‘‘we'll never forget the Jewish people who suffered in World War II.’’
Trump’s three-paragraph statement Friday on International Holocaust Remembrance Day drew criticism from the Anti-Defamation League after it failed to make any reference to Jews, in contrast with presidents from previous administrations.
Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia said a Holocaust remembrance must acknowledge the slaughter of Jews, otherwise it becomes ‘‘Holocaust denial.’’
Priebus said on NBC’s ‘‘Meet the Press’’ he’s ‘‘not whitewashing anything’’ and that for the record, ‘‘Everyone’s heart is impacted here by that terrible time.’’
Last week at the United Nations, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the rise of populism has triggered an increase in anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia, anti-Muslim hatred, and other forms of intolerance.
The new UN chief addressed several hundred people Friday, including Holocaust survivors, at the United Nations’ annual commemoration of the Holocaust.
“A ‘new normal’ of public discourse is taking hold, in which prejudice is given a free pass and the door is opened to even more extreme hatred,’’ he said.
Guterres, who as Portugal’s prime minister spurred Parliament in 1996 to revoke a 16th-century letter expelling all Jews from the country, said people like him who grew up after World War II never imagined they would see rising attacks on Jews in Europe.
But ‘‘anti-Semitism is alive and kicking,’’ he said. ‘‘Irrationality and intolerance are back.’’
Some people still deny the Holocaust despite the facts, Guterres said, and there is a new trend of Holocaust revisionism ‘‘with the rewriting of history and even the honoring of disgraced officials from those days.’’
He warned that ‘‘hate speech and anti-Semitic imagery are proliferating across the Internet and social media.’’ and violent extremist groups are using anti-Semitic appeals ‘‘to rouse their forces and recruit new followers.’’
Guterres said growing intolerance in many forms is being ‘‘triggered by populism.’’
He called the stereotyping of Muslims ‘‘deeply troubling,’’ and said he is ‘‘extremely concerned at the discrimination faced by minorities, refugees and migrants across the world.’’
The secretary-general said the United Nations must promote tolerance, strengthen its human rights operation, push for justice for perpetrators of grave crimes, and invest in education and youth.
Associated Press
