Administration of Joseph R. Biden, Jr., 2024
January 26, 2024
Tomorrow, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we join nations around the world and pause to mourn one of the darkest chapters in human history, when 6 million Jews were systematically targeted and murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators in the Holocaust during the 1930s and 1940s. We also grieve the Roma, Sinti, Slavs, people with disabilities, LGBTQI+ individuals, racial minorities, and political dissidents who were abused or killed. And we honor the courage of survivors and the heroism of people who bravely stood up to the Nazis, risking everything to save innocent lives.
This year, the charge to remember the Holocaust, the evil of the Nazis, and the scourge of anti-Semitism is more pressing than ever. On October 7 Hamas terrorists unleashed pure, unadulterated evil on the people of Israel, slaughtering approximately 1,200 innocent people and taking hundreds more hostage—including survivors of the Shoah. It was the worst atrocity committed against the Jewish people in a single day since the Holocaust.
In the aftermath of Hamas's vicious massacre, we have witnessed an alarming rise of despicable anti-Semitism at home and abroad that has surfaced painful scars from millennia of hate and genocide of Jewish people. It is unacceptable. We cannot remember all that Jewish survivors of the Holocaust experienced and then stand silently by when Jews are attacked and targeted again today. Without equivocation or exception, we must also forcefully push back against attempts to ignore, deny, distort, and revise history. This includes Holocaust denialism and efforts to minimize the horrors that Hamas perpetrated on October 7, especially its appalling and unforgiveable use of rape and sexual violence to terrorize victims.
Under my Presidency and our first-ever National Strategy To Combat Antisemitism, we are continuing to condemn and fight anti-Semitism at every turn. Because sadly, these events remind us that hate never goes away. It only hides until it is given a little oxygen. And we must each do our part to ensure that hate in all its forms has no safe harbor anywhere in the world. It is our shared moral responsibility to stand up to anti-Semitism and hate-fueled violence at home and abroad and to make real the promise of "Never Again."
Categories: Statements by the President : International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Subjects: Anti-Semitism; Hamas political-paramilitary organization; Holocaust Remembrance Day, International; Israel, attacks by Hamas.
DCPD Number: DCPD202400048.
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