Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, congressional leaders, newly appointed U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Board Chair Jeff Miller and others spoke alongside Holocaust survivors on Capitol Hill on Tuesday at the U.S.’ annual commemoration of Yom HaShoah.

At the event, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and other lawmakers presented a congressional gold medal — Congress’ highest honor — to the family of Benjamin Ferencz, the youngest of the U.S. prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials. Ferencz’s daughter, accepting the award, echoed her father’s motto — ”law, not war” — also imprinted on the medal itself.

In his remarks, Lutnick said that “President [Donald] Trump has shown through action, not just words but bold action, that he is the greatest friend of the Jewish people,” pointing the president’s work to free the hostages who were still in captivity in Gaza on Yom HaShoah last year.

Lutnick also recounted his visit last year to Poland, where he commemorated the liberation of Auschwitz and Birkenau, an experience that “left an indelible impression on my wife and me.” He drew a line from those atrocities to the 9/11 attacks, in which Lutnick, the former CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, lost friends, family and many of his colleagues.

“Both groups of the fallen are made up of common heroes whose memory on earth will be lost if not for the determined effort by organizations like the Holocaust Memorial Museum to keep their legacy alive and ensure that the refrain ‘Never Again’ echoes for generations to come,” Lutnick continued. “We are here because the victims of the Holocaust can continue to remind us that apathy must be overcome by meaning, neglect supplanted by remembrance and indifference surmounted by love.”

Miller, a lobbyist who was recently appointed to replace former Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat as the Museum’s board chair, described Holocaust remembrance and the mission of the museum as a critical duty.

“The fight against antisemitism and Holocaust denial is one of the defining moral challenges of our time,” Miller said. “For as long as the museum stands, as long as the truth of the Holocaust is taught, and as long as the people of conscience refuse to surrender to hatred, the [forces] of antisemitism, will find that they have not awakened our fear, but our unbreakable will and our determination to never, ever surrender in the fight against evil.”

Miller also acknowledged the rampant and growing modern problem of antisemitism. He warned that Holocaust denialism has been spreading, particularly online, that antisemitism has returned “not quietly, but openly,” with Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks serving as a “brutal reminder of what happens when hatred of Jews is allowed to go unchecked,” and Jews facing attacks and feeling afraid globally.

He said that he’s seen his own daughters face antisemitism on their college campuses, a challenge that “demands leadership, moral clarity and action.”

Then-Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning at the end of World War II that some would eventually try to deny the Holocaust, “has become reality,” Miller said. 

“The Holocaust demonstrates that hate began with the Jews but did not end with the Jews. That lesson cannot be more urgent today, and that is why the work of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum matters so deeply,” Miller said. “Antisemitism has once again shown its face in our time with shocking boldness. Let the world hear this clearly: We will confront it. We will expose it, and we will defeat it, because the promise of Never Again is not negotiable.”

Miller offered particular thanks to Trump, calling him the greatest friend of the Jewish people and Israel, saying that the Jewish people “owe President Trump a lifetime of gratitude” for his efforts to free the hostages in Gaza and push back against antisemitism on college campuses and elsewhere.

But he also said that the challenge of antisemitism goes beyond any institution, individual or administration, and is instead a question of “the responsibilities of free people in every generation,” emphasizing that the Holocaust began with “lies, with propaganda, with conspiracy theories.”

Johnson highlighted modern manifestations of antisemitism particularly on college campuses and in support for the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel.

“Today, the work is even more important than ever, not only because those who personally witnessed this tragedy grow fewer in number each year, but because denying and distorting the truth of the Holocaust has become something, once again, that is tolerated and in some cases, even defended,” Johnson said. “On college campuses, leaders of once respectable institutions have excused hateful ideas as ‘context.’ The flags of radical Islamic terrorist groups have become commonplace on campus quadrangles, and safe spaces are reserved not for the Jewish students threatened by physical violence on those campuses, but for those who chant ‘From the river to the sea’ and ‘Long live Hamas.’”

He said that these “dangerous ideologies” have “dangerous consequences.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) emphasized that neutrality and silence are not options in the face of antisemitism.

“It’s important that we continue to take a side,” Jeffries said. “We have no other moral choice, because we know the violent and deadly history and reality of antisemitism. Jewish life has included, for thousands of years, pain, pogroms, persecution, prejudice, expulsions, the terrorist attack on Oct. 7 and the Holocaust. Never again must always mean never again.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) highlighted the need to call out antisemitism wherever it arises.

“We must continue to keep our eyes open today, at a time when antisemitism sadly runs rampant around the world once again,” Schumer said. “The responsibility falls on all of us. We must remember how the Holocaust happened, how too many stood silent in the face of evil, and how the death of democracy in Europe enabled the death of 6 million Jews. The poisons of fascism and antisemitism come from the same vial.” 

Other lawmakers who spoke included Reps. Lois Frankel (D-FL) and Joe Wilson (R-SC) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who led the legislation awarding Ferencz with the gold medal. Sarah Bloomfield, the director of the USHMM, delivered remarks on behalf of Ferencz’s son, and several Holocaust survivors shared their stories as well.