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President Biden: Too Many People Are Denying, Rationalizing, and Ignoring the Horrors of the Holocaust and the Oct. 7 Massacre
(White House) President Biden addressed the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's annual Days of Remembrance ceremony on May 7, 2024: "During these sacred Days of Remembrance, we grieve. We give voice to the 6 million Jews who were systematically targeted and murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War Two....We must keep telling the story. We must keep teaching the truth. We must keep teaching our children and our grandchildren. And the truth is we are at risk of people not knowing the truth." "Growing up, my dad taught me and my siblings about the horrors of the Shoah at our family dinner table. That's why I visited Yad Vashem with my family as a senator, as vice president, and as president. And that's why I took my grandchildren to Dachau, so they could see and bear witness to the perils of indifference, the complicity of silence in the face of evil." "This ancient hatred of Jews...was brought to life on Oct. 7, 2023. On a sacred Jewish holiday, the terrorist group Hamas unleashed the deadliest day of the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Driven by the ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people off the face of the Earth, over 1,200 innocent people - babies, parents, grandparents - slaughtered in their kibbutz, massacred at a musical festival, brutally raped, mutilated, and sexually assaulted. Thousands more carrying wounds, bullets, and shrapnel from the memory of that terrible day they endured. Hundreds taken hostage, including survivors of the Shoah." "Just seven and a half months later, people are already forgetting. They're already forgetting that Hamas unleashed this terror, that it was Hamas that brutalized Israelis, that it was Hamas who took and continues to hold hostages. I have not forgotten, nor have you, and we will not forget." "As Jews around the world still cope with the atrocities and trauma of that day and its aftermath, we've seen a ferocious surge of antisemitism in America and around the world: vicious propaganda on social media, Jews forced to hide their kippahs under baseball hats, tuck their Jewish stars into their shirts. On college campuses, Jewish students blocked, harassed, attacked while walking to class. Antisemitism - antisemitic posters, slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel, the world's only Jewish state." "Too many people denying, downplaying, rationalizing, ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and Oct. 7, including Hamas' appalling use of sexual violence to torture and terrorize Jews. It's absolutely despicable, and it must stop."