A week after President Donald Trump took office for the first time in 2017, the White House ignited a political and media firestorm by releasing a statement commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day that failed to mention Jews. 

The omission was covered in major media outlets like CNN and Politico; the Anti-Defamation League called it “puzzling and troubling.” 

Nearly a decade later, Trump released another Holocaust Remembrance Day post this week, with a far more specific message: “Today, we pay respect to the blessed memories of the millions of Jewish people, who were murdered at the hands of the Nazi Regime and its collaborators during the Holocaust,” the statement read, “as well as the Slavs and the Roma, people with disabilities, religious leaders, persons targeted based on their sexual orientation, and political prisoners who were also targeted for systematic slaughter.”

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance’s post commemorating the day, which marks the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz by Allied Forces, did not mention Jews or antisemitism, leading political rivals on the left to pounce. (Democratic Majority for Israel called it “indefensible.”)

But despite the visibility of Vance’s tweet — which his defenders pointed out included pictures of him and his wife at Dachau, standing in front of a sign that said “Never again” in Yiddish — he was far from the only politician that failed to mention the fact that the Holocaust targeted Jews. Among them were: Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA), both of whom pledged to remember the victims of the Holocaust without referring to Nazis’ targeting of Jews. 

Multiple presenters at the U.K.’s BBC also failed to mention Jews in their coverage of Holocaust Remembrance Day — drawing backlash and a subsequent apology from the national broadcaster.

Does it matter that these politicians or media don’t reference Jews if they are still highlighting the significance of the Holocaust? It’s possible to argue that, definitionally, the Holocaust was about Jews, so one could assume that any reference to the Holocaust is itself a reference to the killing of Jews and the antisemitism that led to it. 

“If I talk about the potato famine, do I have to say Irish? How many other potato famines were there?” asked Deborah Lipstadt, a Holocaust historian who served as President Joe Biden’s antisemitism envoy. “But this is part of a greater whole in an age of rising antisemitism.” 

For years, Americans’ knowledge of basic facts about the Holocaust has been declining, particularly as fewer Holocaust survivors are alive each year to share their stories. A 2023 survey conducted by the Claims Conference found that 21% of Americans believed that 2 million Jews or fewer were killed. Eight percent of Americans, and 15% of 18- to 29-year-olds, said the number of Jews who were killed during the Holocaust has been greatly exaggerated. 

“Holocaust history has the power to teach vital, timeless lessons about why our choices matter — but only when it is approached with the precision, historical integrity and respect it rightfully deserves,” the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum said in a statement this week that called for an end to “the abuse and exploitation of Holocaust memory.” 

In the 81 years since the Holocaust, political leaders and movements have exploited the memory of the genocide to serve their own ends, particularly by shifting the focus of who its victims were. 

In the former Soviet Union, where more than 2 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, memorials to those killed called them “peaceful Soviet citizens” — stripping them of their Jewish identity, as if their killers had targeted Russians rather than Jews. Some right-wing politicians in modern Poland have attempted to quash historical scholarship documenting that Poles were involved in Nazis’ killing of Jews, and that the Nazis targeted Jews, in particular, rather than just the Poles (though Poles were targeted, too). 

Norman Goda, a Holocaust historian at the University of Florida, said that modern remembrances of the Holocaust that fail to mention Jews are “a soft form of denial.” 

“The Nazis certainly knew who they were deporting. The Nazis certainly knew who they were gassing,” Goda told Jewish Insider on Wednesday. “The ignorance is such that you have to remind people that the Nazis called this Die Endlösung der Judenfrage, the final solution of the Jewish question. They weren’t just killing random people.” 

The politicians posting about the Holocaust almost surely know that, as do most of their constituents. But rising antisemitism coupled with declining knowledge about a genocide that targeted and killed 6 million Jews means that reminding people of the facts — the specifics — remains crucial. 

“Do we do this with any other mass catastrophe? Do we discuss the Armenian Genocide without mentioning the Armenians? Do we discuss slavery in the United States without mentioning who the slaves were?” Goda questioned. “We don’t do it, and anybody who would do that is engaged in an almost willful misunderstanding, either a profound historical ignorance, on the one hand, where you almost have to try to be that ignorant, or something that is simply more nefarious.”

Jeremy Carl, a Trump administration nominee for a senior position at the State Department, has expressed a range of derogatory views of the Jewish community, characterizing in writings and public interviews the community as holding a victim mentality, downplaying the significance of the Holocaust to the Jewish story and experience, musing about the need to address the what he called the “Jewish Question” and characterizing Jews as religiously incorrect and in need of conversion.

Carl also rejected the argument that Israel is the United States’ strongest ally and was deeply critical of Christian Zionism. He has additionally espoused a view of the United States as a white, Christian nation, claiming that white people are undergoing a “cultural genocide” and deliberate replacement.

Carl was nominated to be the assistant secretary of state for international organizations in June, but did not move forward to a hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before the end of this year’s Senate session. Should the Trump administration still want Carl in the role, it will have to re-file his nomination in the new year. Carl said in a response on X that neither he nor the administration have decided whether to resubmit the nomination. Carl served as deputy assistant secretary of the Interior in the first Trump administration.

“Jews have often loved to play the victim rather than accept that they are participants in history. That means that at times of course they’ve been victims but they also can be perpetrators,” Carl, who was raised in a secular Jewish household but converted to Christianity, said in a 2024 interview with “The Christian Ghetto” podcast, saying that some Christians have been “understandably” resentful of Jews throughout history.

“I think it’s inevitable of course that people will always take their own side in [a] historical quarrel. The Jewish community has kind of done [that] to an unusual extent,” Carl continued. 

While he offered disclaimers that he was not speaking about all Jews, he generally painted with a broad brush, characterizing the majority of the Jewish community in largely pejorative ways.

He said that the Holocaust “kind of dominates so much of modern Jewish thinking,” adding that he believed it to be “very unhealthy.” 

“Now, when you’re getting to this next generation — everybody has traumas in their past. How much are we going to relitigate them?” Carl asked rhetorically. “There’s a level of [self]-involvement there that I kind of find a little distasteful.”

He also said that he feels that “mainline Christian[s]” do not expect as much from Jews as they could and are “very reluctant to criticize Jews or Jewish communal behavior even when, in my view, that might be very warranted.”

Carl said that Jews, meanwhile, “tend to see evangelical Christians in a very negative light … and I frankly think reflects poorly on the Jewish community.” 

He claimed that the Jewish community is afraid of Christian communal unity as a legacy of past conversion efforts.

Carl also declared that Jews have never been oppressed in the U.S. and added that “the notion that Jews are the downtrodden here just doesn’t really match with actual reality. I understand why this type of attitude can cause resentment among some Christians who observe it. … Even when I was Jewish, I found it distasteful.”

In a lengthy response on X, Carl dismissed Jewish Insider’s reporting as a misleading and agenda-driven smear.

“I have never ‘downplayed’ the Holocaust, one of the great horrors of modern history, except in the overactive imagination and perhaps bad faith portrayal of the author,” Carl said.

At the same time, in “The Christian Ghetto” interview he claimed to reject conspiracy theories about the Jewish community as a whole and the neo-Nazi Groyper movement, saying that adherents go too far in their hatred of Jews in unproductive ways.

“Nobody can just take a small sip of the drink in front of them, which is the ‘Jewish Question,’ and imbibe carefully and have a mature discussion on it,” Carl said. “[They] need to overdose massively on it, to the point that they just begin saying completely ridiculous and absurd things.”

Carl said that such activity makes him shy away from “critique” of the Jewish community “because you don’t want to be lumped in with these clowns.” He declared that Jewish activists “love the Groypers because they’re just so discrediting of anyone who would ask questions about any of this,” referring to Jewish political activism.

He also claimed that Jews are “more susceptible to political radicalisms of all types and political ultra-enthusiasms” due to a “misplaced religious impulse” of Judaism “searching for the Messiah that had actually been found.”

“I have, of course, been very critical of the political activities of much of the establishment Jewish community since most of the community is liberal and I am a conservative. This should surprise nobody, nor is it a scandal. I have also been critical of the extreme neoconservatives such as those who seem to be pushing this hit piece,” Carl said in his response.

Carl also said on “The Christian Ghetto” podcast the U.S. should have less of a relationship with Israel, and was highly critical of Christian Zionist ideology that attaches a theological dimension to support for Israel.

He said that while from a secular perspective, he feels “vaguely positively disposed to Israel,” he rejects Christian Zionism and the “theological trappings that some Christians put around Israel.”

“At a basis, I have a very pro-Israel view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in abstract, I just don’t want us involved in it that much,” Carl said. “The amount of time and energy that America spends on this question — often to the detriment of our own national interest. Nor do I accept that Israel is our greatest ally.”

He characterized himself as a “Buchananite” and a “Paul-ite” in his ideology.

Carl said in his response that he is fully supportive of the Trump administration’s foreign policy and support for Israel, including the administration’s sanctions on the International Criminal Court and the UN’s “Israel monomania.”

He said in an interview with “The Will Spencer Podcast” that conversion from Judaism is a “very fraught thing” and that, in many Jewish families, “it would be easier to convert to Satanism honestly, in some ways.” 

He said on “The Christian Ghetto” podcast that Jews have been a “particularly thorny problem” in their resistance to conversion to Christianity. He said he does not believe, from a theological perspective, in religious pluralism, and characterized Judaism as an incorrect and invalid religious practice, arguing that Christians should be trying to convert Jews “where we can.”

In his response, Carl said, “As a Christian I want everyone to embrace the Christian faith, especially my family and friends, because I believe Christianity to be true, and other religions false. Again, this is not a scandal except perhaps in the minds of the author and his editors who evidently believe that standard beliefs held by the vast majority of Christians throughout history are scandalous.”

Carl has also espoused a vision of America as a white, Christian nation, and asserted that white people in America are subject to “persecution” and a “cultural genocide.”

“American whites are victims of a cultural genocide,” Carl said at the 2024 National Conservatism conference. “I’m suggesting this partially again to troll any leftist media who might be in the room and furiously scribbling my unforgivable hate speech in their notebooks. But I’m not saying it entirely for that purpose.”

He’s the author of The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism is Tearing America Apart, which dismisses the idea of rising white supremacy and focuses on the thesis that anti-white policies are endemic in modern America.

The original title of the book, Carl revealed in a 2024 essay, was It’s Okay to Be White, which has become a slogan used by white supremacists. 

He states in that essay that demographic shifts in the country are the result of “a great replacement of whites,” referencing the conspiracy theory that a shadowy force is attempting to replace the country’s white population with immigrants. He declared that the great replacement is “a fact” and “a basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.”

“I can understand why [Indian President Narendra] Modi wants India to be a Hindu nation, because I want America to be a Christian nation, defined not in total but in part by its European historic identity,” he continued. 

He added in “The Christian Ghetto” podcast interview that he does not “really believe in Judeo-Christian — I think America is a Christian nation.”

He said in “The Will Spencer Podcast” interview that his book was designed to help white people “figure out a way as a white person to navigate around the issue and also understand that you’re not crazy. The sorts of things you’re experiencing in terms of discrimination or racism, etc. are very real and that you don’t need to put up with that.”

At the same time, Carl did acknowledge in that interview that America would never be an “ethnically uniform” or “racially uniform” way and “that’s okay, that’s manageable,” but that the country should have a “sense of a majority tradition … majority religious practice” and a “tolerance for other minority groups to all be within that culture.”

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

CNN previously reported that Carl scrubbed thousands of inflammatory posts after his nomination.

This article was updated on 12/21/2025 to include Carl’s response.

LONDON — When he arrived at the Ohrdruf concentration and forced labor camp in Germany in April 1945, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was appalled by what he saw. 

The first to be liberated by U.S. troops, the camp was strewn with the decomposing remains of hundreds of prisoners murdered by the SS, who had days earlier fled the scene of their crimes. 

Three days later, Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, wrote to U.S. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall saying, “The things I saw beggar description. … I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give first hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”

Eighty years later, Eisenhower’s great-grandson, Merrill Eisenhower, the CEO of People to People International, is carrying the torch for Holocaust remembrance, as he seeks to ensure the world never forgets.

Earlier this year, he joined the March of the Living from Auschwitz to Birkenau in Poland. In a powerful act of remembrance and continuity, he walked alongside Holocaust survivor Eva Clarke, who he now considers a good friend. Last week, the pair were reunited in London to raise awareness and funds for the charity behind the annual march. 

Eisenhower told Jewish Insider in an interview this month he hadn’t heard of the organization before they approached him a year ago. But when he was invited to join this year’s event commemorating the 80th anniversary of VE Day, he didn’t hesitate.

“I said ‘absolutely, I’d be honored to’. It was humbling,” he said, adding that he immediately suggested organizing a fundraiser in Washington beforehand. That was where he first met Clarke, who was born on April 29 inside the gates of Mauthausen, just days before Eisenhower’s forces liberated the camp in Austria. 

“We’ve been friends ever since,” he said of Clarke. “You know how you meet somebody and you just connect — it was one of those things.”

Although he never met his famous great-grandfather, who later became the 34th U.S. president, Eisenhower was close to his maternal grandfather. John Eisenhower served alongside his father in Europe and would later serve him in the White House, too. 

“On June 6, 1944, D-Day, my grandfather John graduated West Point and became aide-de-camp to Gen. Eisenhower, and so he was with him the whole time through Europe,” the younger Eisenhower said.

“When my great-grandfather arrived at his first camp, he said directly to my grandfather: ‘Make sure you document this, take photos. Bring Congress, bring the press. One day there’s going to be some bastard that says this never happened.’”

Sadly those words proved prophetic. Holocaust denial and distortion are surging around the world, including in the U.S. 

The haunting images are part of what motivates Eisenhower. “Those photos that he [his grandfather] was taking, some of those still sit in my house and some are in the National Archives and some are in the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Kansas,” he said. 

“Most of the time, I find myself on the verge of not understanding how someone could do it, and being grateful of the fact that there were people like my great-grandfather who stood up to the tyranny and the devastation, and the death and the murder,” he said.

“My great-grandfather being a part of it is important, but he was one of hundreds of thousands of American troops who marched across Europe liberating those camps.”

Being involved with March of the Living has given Eisenhower a fresh perspective on the devastation.

“It’s not just about going from Auschwitz to Birkenau in a march that represents the same death march that so many millions of people, mainly Jewish, suffered,” he said. “It’s about understanding that when you’re doing that march, you’re actually celebrating the lives and the liberation of all those people who were saved throughout Europe. Every step taken from Auschwitz to Birkenau is a little bit of erasing the evil out of that place, because we’re educating and teaching people the good that can happen.”

Eisenhower is grateful that survivors like Clarke, who lost most of her family in Auschwitz, including her father and brother, are still able to testify. 

“I’m thankful they’re here to spread the message and to combat antisemitism, discrimination, racism,” he said. “Being with people like Eva is refreshing, it’s eye-opening and I think that I’ve actually gained more from them [survivors] than I could ever give them. It’s amazing to find out how they were able to survive — their stories give hope to humanity.”

While in London, Eisenhower met with others who owe their lives to his great-grandfather’s forces and also visited the Houses of Parliament where he met with Lord Mann, the British government’s independent advisor on antisemitism.

Eisenhower lives with his wife, Nicole, and their children in Kansas, where he works in property development. “I build high-rises — that’s my day job,” he said. Beyond that, the 44-year-old is heavily involved in public service work and philanthropy. He serves on the international board of directors for People to People International, an NGO set up by his great-grandfather and which his mother, Mary, formerly headed. 

The youngest of John Eisenhower’s four children, his mother spent much of her early childhood in the White House. But Ike was not the family’s only link to power.

“I’m actually related to two presidents, which is kind of wild, right?” said Eisenhower. His aunt Julie, married to his mother’s brother David, is Richard Nixon’s daughter. 

So does anyone else in the family have ambitions for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue today? 

“Nobody is political at all,” he said. “In fact, we do the opposite of politics. We try to really get involved with improving international relations, but it’s more like world peace efforts.”

That said, he reserves the right to keep his options open. 

“I may one day run for office,” he admitted to JI. “But I can’t imagine wanting to be president of the United States of America. You have constant criticism even if you’re right, and even worse criticism if you’re wrong.”

Although he refused to be drawn on party politics or individuals, Eisenhower had this to say about the current climate: “Right now within politics you have people from both sides that are well beyond the point of reason. 

“This is what I tell people: if I agree with you in my day-to-day life 60% of the time, I’m probably going to be a pretty good friend of yours. For some reason, if I agree with you 80% of the time in politics, but I disagree with you 20% of the time, it means you hate me. 

“That type of complete divisiveness is why you had someone like Hitler rise to power, then all of a sudden the economy goes terrible and now we need someone to blame.”

The rise of antisemitism from both sides of the political spectrum “doesn’t make sense to me” and is “disappointing,” he said. What would his great-grandfather think? 

“I think he’d be disturbed with the way the current political environments are going, and he would give caution and warning, making sure we remember what people like Eva and her family went through so that we don’t do it again.

“I think when people stand still and say nothing, that’s when bad things happen. We have to crack down on that kind of rhetoric.”

He admitted that’s easier said than done, but added: “In the U.S. we have absolute freedom of speech; however, being a leader, you have the ability to say, ‘this is not right’ and ‘we cannot tolerate this behavior.’ I think there are certain presidents that have done a better job [of that].”

Clarke, 80, who traveled to London from her home in Cambridge, said the week with Eisenhower had been “incredible.” 

“I’m going to say this forever — he’s my new best friend and I’ve been dropping his name all the time,” she said.

“It is such an incredible privilege to have met Merrill in his own right and for all the good he’s doing, but just to think about what his great-grandfather did. … If he hadn’t done what he did, I wouldn’t be here now.”

She described the global rise in antisemitism as “very depressing and very worrying,” but has pledged to continue promoting Holocaust education, a role she has inherited from her mother who brought her to Britain as a preschooler. 

“All we can do is to carry on with what we’re doing because we can only take very small measures, but every small measure adds to the whole,” she said. “I feel it’s my duty, like Merrill does.”

The connection between the pair is all important, according to Scott Saunders, founder and chairman of March of the Living. 

“Merrill represents the next chapter in the ongoing story of witness and responsibility,” he told JI. 

“Earlier this year he marched with us at the March of the Living in Auschwitz, and now, meeting British survivors here in the U.K., he is demonstrating what it means to actively carry the torch of remembrance. 

“The March of the Living has always been about connection: between past and present, survivors and young people, memory and action. Merrill’s dedication embodies that mission.”

Standing inside a gas chamber, Natalie Francisco felt history — the darkest kind — come alive in a way no classroom lesson on the Holocaust could have.

Francisco, an 11th grader at Success Academy High School of the Liberal Arts–Harlem, told Jewish Insider that “witnessing Auschwitz-Birkenau, literally being inside a gas chamber, brought the horror of it all to me in a way that reading or studying history could not.”

“It was super emotional to think about the sheer inhumanity and the vast scale of it. I will carry the memories of the visit for the rest of my life,” she said.  

Fransciso was one of eight high school students who took part in the school’s inaugural six-day trip to Poland last month, which included visits to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the site of the Plaszów Concentration Camp in Krakow and the Warsaw Ghetto.

Success Academy, a network of New York City charter schools primarily serving low-income families, designed the new program as a way to give students “a direct personal connection and opportunity to understand this singular event in history,” Eva Moskowitz, the organization’s CEO and founder, told JI. 

While the trip to Poland came as antisemitic incidents reached record-high levels in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel — and anti-Israel rhetoric has in particular surged dramatically in New York City K-12 schools, Moskowitz, who is Jewish, said the program wasn’t necessarily designed to combat the increase of antisemitism. 

“Even if there weren’t recent, horrific incidents of antisemitism, I would still want our students to understand [the Holocaust],” she said, adding that the trip was several years in the making, with logistics including obtaining passports for students, many of whom have never traveled outside of the U.S.

“At Success Academy, our students spend four years studying world history in middle school, and in high school students take both AP World History and AP European History,” continued Moskowitz. “Our curriculum is primary-source driven. But the ultimate primary source for the Holocaust is visiting an extermination camp.” 

Miguel Suriel, a student at Success Academy High School of the Liberal Arts–Manhattan, echoed that seeing the camps in person had a larger impact than learning about the Holocaust in class. 

“Nothing prepared me to witness where, and how, it took place. I am so grateful I got to see it with my own eyes. I will never forget it, and I am changed because of it.”

“It was the hair, the enormous piles of shoes, glasses and luggage that conveyed to me the 1.1 million people, mostly Jews but not exclusively so, that were deliberately and systematically murdered there,” said Suriel. 

Success Academy was founded by Moskowitz in 2006 to provide an alternative for students attending poor-performing New York City public schools. Nearly 90% of Success Academy’s 22,000 students are nonwhite, and 70% come from low-income families. Earlier this year, one of Success Academy’s schools was ranked as one of the top 10 public high schools across New York’s five boroughs, according to US News & World Report.

Ellie Miller, an AP U.S. history teacher at Success Academy High School of the Liberal Arts–Harlem, told JI that she could see from students’ faces “that this journey will leave a lasting impression, shaping their character and sense of moral responsibility.”

“While our students spend a significant time studying this singular event in the classroom, nothing compares to actually walking in the footsteps of this unimaginable history,” said Miller. 

Whether the trip will run again next year “is really a question of resources,” said Moskowitz. “I [think] it’s important to invest in our students’ understanding.” 

While funding only allowed for bringing eight students to Poland, those students presented their experiences to peers upon returning to New York. “We brought the entire high school community together to learn,” said Moskowitz.  

Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-OR), in a letter to Portland’s Jewish community, apologized for a recent House floor speech in which she appeared to compare the war in Gaza to the Holocaust while explaining her support for a resolution describing the war as a genocide.

According to local reporting, Dexter, who represents a wide swath of Portland, told Jewish leaders in a private meeting she intends to remain a co-sponsor of that resolution.

“I am reaching out with humility and appreciation that intent and impact can sometimes be quite different, and I recognize and take responsibility for the harm I have done to the trust I have with many in our Jewish community,” Dexter said in the letter, first shared by the Jewish Review, a publication affiliated with the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland. “I am deeply sorry that my recent statement on the U.S. House floor gave the impression that I was equating the Holocaust with the evolving events in Gaza.”

Dexter said that she “should not have discussed” the war in Gaza and the Holocaust “during the same speech” and acknowledged that the speech “gave many the impression I was comparing them” when she did not intend to do so. She said that the Holocaust “is without comparison.”

“In the aftermath of Hamas’ atrocious attack on October 7th and in the face of rising antisemitism that is pervasive in every corner of the world, I am genuinely sorry to have been the cause of further pain,” Dexter continued. “I am mindful of the remaining living survivors of the Holocaust and certainly many, many family members of victims and survivors who I may have hurt. I want to apologize to them for how my words may have been hurtful toward them or disrespectful of their loved ones’ memories.”

Dexter said that she remains committed to supporting Oregon’s Jewish community and Israel’s right to exist, and pledged to “work to do better in the future” to consider how her words may impact the community.

“Clearly, I could have done better. I will continue to come to the Jewish community, those both in support and in opposition to my views, to expand my understanding and sit in honest discourse with you, to hopefully build greater trust and understanding with time,” Dexter continued. “You have my commitment to standing up against antisemitism and for the needs of our Jewish community today — and every day.”

Dexter also met directly with and apologized to members of the Jewish community, including Jewish Federation of Greater Portland CEO Marc Blattner and Bob Horenstein, chief community relations and public affairs officer, according to the Jewish Review article.

Horenstein told the Jewish Review that the meeting was a “candid and difficult discussion” and said that Dexter offered regret for her “poor choice of words,” but that she said she would not withdraw her support for the resolution accusing Israel of genocide.

“In the meeting, Rep. Dexter reinforced Israel’s right to exist and to self-defense. However, she believed the Netanyahu government went too far and thus would not withdraw her co-sponsorship of the misguided congressional resolution. On the issue of the Holocaust comparison, she listened intently and we believe her apology was heartfelt,” Horenstein said. “We look forward to working with her and being a resource to her moving forward.”

Dexter was first elected in 2024, beating back a far-left challenger with assistance from AIPAC’s United Democracy Project. Though she offered a broadly pro-Israel platform in 2024, she has since swung left, also calling for a halt to offensive weapons transfers to the Jewish state.

Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-OR) drew comparisons between the Holocaust and the war in Gaza, the latter of which she described as a genocide, in a speech on the House floor on Thursday, explaining her decision to support a resolution with far-left lawmakers, supported by anti-Israel groups, accusing Israel of genocide.

Dexter was backed by AIPAC’s United Democracy Project super PAC in her 2024 primary race against an opponent viewed as further left, and ran on a relatively standard Democratic platform when it came to Israel issues. But she has shifted dramatically to the far left on the issue in recent months, also throwing her support behind efforts to cut off offensive weapons transfers to the Jewish state.

The Oregon congresswoman began her speech by recounting a visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the timing of which she described as “very intentional.”

“I went to reflect on the horrific history of dehumanization and ethnic cleansing that ultimately led the world to create a new term to describe such an unfathomable evil. That word is genocide,” Dexter said. “After the Holocaust, the international community made a commitment that such evil can never happen again to any people, anywhere. Never again, they said. That is why I recently signed on to a resolution recognizing Israel’s actions in Gaza led by the Netanyahu government as a genocide.”

Dexter said that she signed on “with a heavy heart” and “with the utmost respect for the Jewish people” but acknowledged that Jews in her district “may feel abandoned or deeply harmed by my action.” She professed her ongoing opposition to antisemitism and support for “our Jewish neighbors.”

“Many in this body have been reticent to clearly call out the mass suffering, the ethnic cleansing, the war crimes taking place in Gaza. I will not willingly continue to be part of that complicity,” Dexter continued. “As a United States representative, my job is to stand up against the power and our resources of this country being used in such ways.”

She said that “history has and will continue to judge this body, not just for what it did, but for what it failed to do. … I want my children to live in a country where leaders can be relied upon to lead with courage, empathy, and moral clarity. And I urge every Oregonian watching to hold me accountable in a shared unshakable belief in the sanctity of human life.”

Sara Bloomfield, the director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, criticized Dexter’s comments.

“Exploiting the Holocaust to accuse Israel of genocide is unconscionable and adds further fuel to an already raging antisemitic fire,” Bloomfield said in a statement to Jewish Insider.

AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann said, “The claim of genocide by Israel is a mendacious attempt to distort facts, rewrite historyand a dangerous blood libel. The only genocide in this war happened on October 7, when Hamas openly admitted it wanted to kill every Israeli man, woman, and child it could.  To invoke the Holocaust against Israel is a grotesque moral abomination.”

Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the Trump administration’s nominee to be the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, emphasized the importance of education as the critical tool to combat antisemitism during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday.

“Together with bipartisan support, we must educate the world to respect one another. Lofty goals, perhaps, but a lesson that I learned from the Grand Rabbi of Lubavitch, as well as from my grandparents and my parents, is to do my best to impact and make the world a better place,” Kaploun said. “We do this by building bridges through education and friendships and dialogue. We must learn from the past to protect and educate the living.”

“We must, educate, educate, educate about the history of the Jewish community in America and the Judeo-Christian values our country was founded on,” he continued. “I pledge to all of you here, I will not waver and I will not rest. I will commit to you to do my very best, if confirmed, to fight antisemitism everywhere and to make this world a better arena for God to dwell and spread his blessings upon us all.”

Kaploun also emphasized the importance of understanding the history of the Holocaust, describing the U.S. veterans who liberated Nazi death camps as men who “saw the worst of humanity” and became “the best advocates in the world” against antisemitism. He also said he urges people to visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“People don’t know the history, people don’t understand that we have to respect one another,” Kaploun said. “The problem is that people don’t want to listen to [WWII veterans] and hear their stories. … In America, we believe in freedom of expression and freedom of speech, but at the same time, we have to educate people as to what the facts truly are. … We’re missing that boat.”

Asked by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) about President Donald Trump’s response to Tucker Carlson hosting neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes on his podcast — Trump said that Carlson has “said good things about me over the years” and that “people have to decide” how they feel about Fuentes — Kaploun emphasized freedom of speech, as well as the administration’s work to combat antisemitism.

“I think the president and the secretary of state have made it perfectly clear that any type of antisemitism [does not have] a place in America. … That’s something that guides the administration’s policy,” Kaploun said, adding that the administration’s policy is that “antisemitism is to be condemned everywhere.”

He said that antisemitism is a “global problem” that stems from “ignorance” and a lack of education.

“But freedom of speech is something that’s a right, and freedom of expression globally is an important part of what the administration’s policy is,” he continued.“You have a right to hate, but we have a right to explain and stand up and abhor everything that you say. I believe very strongly that we can condemn remarks whenever they need to be condemned and educate people.”

The friendly interview between Carlson and Fuentes has touched off a reckoning in conservative circles about antisemitism on the right, though the administration has largely stayed out of the fray on the issue.

Pressed on the line between criticism of Israel and antisemitism, Kaploun pointed to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which has been used by the State Department for years.

He said that anyone has a right to criticize Israel, but that when individuals single out Israel without offering criticisms of any other countries, that can cross the line into antisemitism.

In his opening statement, Kaploun detailed the ways that antisemitism has impacted him throughout his life: he heard shouts of “dirty Jew” while walking to synagogue as a child; he grew up during the Crown Heights riots, hearing cries of “kill the Jews” in the streets; and his sister died of 9/11 related cancer and his cousin was killed on Oct. 7 protecting her children who are now orphans.

He said he also had the opportunity to sit with former hostage Yarden Bibas, whose family was killed by terrorists in Gaza after being taken captive, the night before the funeral of Bibas’ wife and children.

“Yes, I have seen the worst that humanity can do. When asked to serve my country by our president in a role that I truly wished did not need to exist there was no hesitation,” Kaploun said. “I sit before you humbled by the opportunity to serve my country. It is a daunting task.”

Kaploun also emphasized that antisemitism is a “symbol of a larger hatred” and that “when a country starts allowing antisemitism, the results are not kind to that country.”

“That is why President Trump and Secretary Rubio have stated there can be no compromise with antisemitism,” he said. “Antisemitism is anti-American. Those who chant ‘death to the Jews’ all too often chant ‘death to America.’ We cannot allow anyone to teach children from infancy to kill and to be a martyr.”

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), co-chair of the Senate antisemitism task force and a member of the committee, told Jewish Insider in a statement, “I’ve worked closely with Special Envoys under both Republican and Democratic Administrations. Maintaining this bipartisan tradition will be critical to the success of this role. If confirmed, I look forward to working with Rabbi Kaploun to achieve our shared priorities.”

In a letter to the committee, the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center’s Nathan Diament and Isaac Pretter — while not directly endorsing Kaploun — emphasized the importance of filling the role quickly and noted Kaploun’s qualifications.

“As an easily identifiable member of the Jewish community, and longtime activist, Rabbi Kaploun is familiar with the issues facing Jews around the world,” the OU Advocacy leaders wrote. “As a member of the Orthodox community, we are familiar with Rabbi Kaploun and his commitment to combatting antisemitism.”

The also noted that he had “shown a willingness to cross the partisan divide” to issue a joint op-ed with predecessors Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt and Elan Carr in response to the Capital Jewish Museum shooting.

“In short, Rabbi Kaploun has proven an eager and capable ally in the fight against antisemitism,” Diament and Pretter said.

Ted Deutch, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee, urged the “swift confirmation of Rabbi Kaploun to help the United States continue to lead the fight against antisemitism across the globe,” in a post on X.

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), a co-chair of the House Jewish Caucus, and 17 other House Democrats wrote to committee leaders in opposition to Kaploun’s nomination, calling it “partisan and controversial.” 

They criticized him for past comments accusing Democrats of failing to condemn the Oct. 7 attackers as terrorists or call out antisemitism, saying that the comments raise concerns about his “judgement, temperament” and capacity to work with Democrats, and that a vote to support him would be an endorsement of those sentiments and an insult to committee Democrats.

They also condemned him for failing to condemn antisemitic comments by Trump and members of his administration, and highlighted past reporting on a lawsuit relating to an alleged extramarital affair.

“Ultimately, Mr. Kaploun, when confronted by antisemitic rhetoric, did not speak out against it and himself engaged in speech that was deeply damaging to the Jewish community at a time of peak antisemitism,” the letter reads. “We must demand better.”

Other signatories to the letter included Jewish Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Becca Balint (D-VT) and Steve Cohen (D-TN), as well as Reps. Adam Smith (D-WA), Jim McGovern (D-MA), Andre Carson (D-IN), Joaquin Castro (D-TX), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), Cleo Fields (D-LA), Mark Takano (D-CA), Madeleine Dean (D-PA), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Troy Carter (D-LA), Emily Randall (D-WA) and Joe Courtney (D-CT).

State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce, nominated to be deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations, testified alongside Kaploun. She affirmed that the administration is committed to preventing the U.N. Relief and Works Agency from having any role in the future of Gaza.

“Other nations, other entities, NGOs know that this is something now, it is a new way forward, it is something they can work forward with,” she said, praising the Trump administration’s Gaza peace plan, recently approved by the U.N. Security Council. “The World Food Program, other entities associated with the U.N. and other nations and their assistance will make the difference. We will pick up the difference of whatever UNRWA claimed that they were doing.”

She also highlighted concerns about UNRWA’s educational programs radicalizing young generations of Palestinians through antisemitic and anti-Israel school curricula and said these issues must end.

Bruce also committed to pursuing “bold reform” at the U.N. and pursuing an end to its anti-Israel bias.

The American Jewish Committee called for a “swift political response” following the raising of plaques at the Jedwabne memorial site in Poland which falsely accuse Jews of being responsible for Soviets killing Poles during the pogrom that occurred there 84 years ago this week. 

At least 340 Jews were burned alive by their Polish neighbors in the massacre at Jedwabne on July 10, 1941. Marking the anniversary of the attack on Thursday, right-wing activist Wojciech Sumliński and his supporters illegally placed plaques in English and Polish several yards from the memorial, offering a revisionist account of what happened at the site. 

One of the plaques reads, “After the Soviets took over eastern Poland, Jews assumed administrative roles and, knowing the local realities, denounced Polish patriots who were then deported and murdered by the Soviets. Only the German attack on the Soviet Union halted these repressions. Then the Germans began killing Jews just as they had previously killed Poles by the millions.”

A separate group of right-wing extremists also disrupted a memorial ceremony at the site on Thursday with loudspeakers, screens showing a film denying the history of the massacre and threats to the Jewish community gathered at the memorial. 

“What happened today in Jedwabne is not only a disgrace to the memory of the victims, it is a test for Poland’s democracy,” Agnieszka Markiewicz, the AJC’s central Europe director, said in a statement. “The normalization of antisemitism, especially from elected officials like Grzegorz Braun, demands more than silence,” said Markiewicz, referring to Poland’s far-right lawmaker who on Thursday stated in a radio interview, “ritual murder is a fact, and Auschwitz with gas chambers is a fake.” 

“It demands moral clarity, legal accountability, and swift political response. Remembrance without responsibility is not remembrance at all,” Markiewicz said. 

The USC Shoah Foundation called the plaques “the most egregious perversion of [distorting] history, as it suggests that Jews collaborated with both Soviet and Nazi authorities against non-Jewish Poles. Such ahistorical, amoral claims are not only historically indefensible, but they are also a moral slander against the lives of those murdered during the Shoah and an affront to their memory.” 

Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, called for “the relevant Polish authorities to remove this offensive installation and to ensure that the historical meaning of the site is preserved and respected.” 

“Yad Vashem is profoundly shocked and deeply concerned by the desecration of historical truth and memory at the Jedwabne memorial site in Poland, where new plaques were recently installed in an apparent attempt to distort the story of the massacre of Jews.”

Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced bipartisan legislation last week aimed at eliminating loopholes used by museums and other stakeholders to continue possessing Nazi-looted artwork that Jewish families have been trying to recover.

Introduced on Thursday, the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act would expand on Cornyn’s 2016 legislation of the same name, which was passed at the time by unanimous consent, by ending the Dec. 31, 2026, sunset date on the original bill and strengthen the existing procedural protections to ensure that victims’ claims are not dismissed due to non-merit-based factors such as time constraints. 

“The artwork wrongfully ripped from Jewish hands during the Holocaust bears witness to a chapter in history when evil persisted and the worst of humanity was on full display. I’m proud to introduce this legislation to support the Jewish people and Holocaust survivors by helping them recover art confiscated by the Nazis that they are rightfully owed and give them the justice and restitution they deserve,” Cornyn said in a statement. 

“The theft of art by the Nazi regime was more than a pilfering of property — it was an act of inhumanity. Our bipartisan effort seeks to strengthen measures to bring long overdue justice to families whose cherished art was brazenly stolen by the Nazis,” Blumenthal said. 

Many families of Holocaust victims in the U.S. who have located artwork from deceased relatives and sued to recover those items face the deadline at the end of next year before the statute of limitations sets in. Thousands of stolen works of art remain unreturned to their rightful owners from the Nazi plunder, and there are scores of ongoing cases to resolve disputes over ownership of those items. 

“Unfortunately, many museums, governments, and institutions have contradicted Congress’ intent and obstructed justice by stonewalling legitimate claims, obscuring provenance, and employing aggressive legal tactics designed to exhaust and outlast Survivors and their families. Rather than embracing transparency and reconciliation, too many have chosen to entrench and litigate, effectively preserving possession of stolen works rather than returning them to their rightful owners,” a press release for the bill states.

Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), John Fetterman (D-PA), Eric Schmitt (R-MO) and Katie Britt (R-AL) co-sponsored the bill, which was endorsed by a number of Jewish organizations including Agudath Israel of America, the American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations of North America, StandWithUs and World Jewish Congress, among others. 

“This legislation helps to right a historic wrong committed during one of the darkest chapters in history. By eliminating unnecessary legal obstacles, the HEAR Act establishes a clear path to restitution for Holocaust survivors and their families, ensuring that art and cultural property stolen by the Nazis can finally be returned to their rightful owners,” Tillis said.

Fetterman said in a statement, “Eighty years after the Holocaust, we have a moral responsibility to do right by the victims of these atrocities and their families. I’m grateful to join my colleagues from both sides of the aisle in introducing the HEAR Act to help return artwork stolen by the Nazis to its rightful owners.”

Someone you recognize and someone you don’t. Someone who lives in the spotlight and someone who doesn’t — Hollywood A-listers posing with Holocaust survivors. 

That was the premise fashion photographer Bryce Thompson conjured up in an effort to amplify the stories of the last living generation of Holocaust survivors. The idea was initially fueled by antisemitism that Thompson, who is not Jewish, saw his friends, neighbors and mother, who converted to Judaism, facing in recent years. But the project — which took three years to complete — assumed even greater relevance after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks, the ensuing war in Gaza and the record high levels of anti-Jewish incidents in the U.S. that followed. 

A new collection of photographs shot by Thompson, called “Borrowed Spotlight,” debuted on Tuesday to coincide with Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, with the release of a coffee-table book and weeklong exhibition at Detour Gallery in Manhattan. It features Hollywood heavyweights including Cindy Crawford, Jennifer Garner and Chelsea Handler.

With years of experience photographing high-profile shoots for publications including GQ, ELLE and Glamour, Thompson initially expected that the photos would speak for themselves. But he told Jewish Insider that the most impactful moments were the ones between shots. “Those were the moments they interacted the most,” he said of his photography subjects. 

“The moments off-camera that were not being photographed, those are the best moments,” Thompson continued. “That’s what started the conversation piece of ‘please tell us your story.’” Ultimately, ‘Borrowed Spotlight’ “turned into an interview with a Holocaust survivor and a celebrity, less than a portrait series.” 

Alongside portraits, mostly candid, the book quotes dozens of comments survivors made in casual conversation with the celebrities they were matched with. Among them was one made by Holocaust survivor and philanthropist Elizabeth Wilf, who was paired with David Schwimmer: “My grandchildren are my revenge, I guess,” Wilf told the “Friends” actor.  

“It became me listening and photographing the moments between people sharing their life stories,” Thompson said. “That really kicked off momentum for us. It was hard to walk away from those shoots and not be so emotionally moved that you want to dive right into the next one.” 

Initially, Thompson tried to pair survivors with celebrities who had common traits or roots, such as a shared country of birth. “But we found that no matter which celebrity we paired with which survivor, they always had common ground even if they were from different places. We’ve all got something in common with a survivor. The conversations flowed much easier than if we tried to curate it.” 

Supermodel Cindy Crawford said in a statement that when she was asked to participate in the book, “It was an instant yes.”

“I’ve always believed in being part of the solution, not the problem,” Crawford said. “The opportunity to meet and converse with a Holocaust survivor felt deeply meaningful.”

Several of the famous participants, including Scooter Braun and Sheryl Sandberg, frequently use their platforms to condemn rising antisemitism. 

But not all of the celebrities approached were so eager to participate; some feared it could hurt their careers to speak out against antisemitism so publicly — especially in the aftermath of Oct. 7. “That was sad to see,” Thompson said. “We’re in an industry where cancel culture is prevalent.”

He added that after Hamas’ attack in Israel and amid the war in Gaza “a lot of our yeses turned into maybes turned into nos because people don’t want to take political sides.” 

“But our message was clear,” Thompson continued, “we started this project before Oct. 7 as a Holocaust awareness project.” 

Thompson told JI that while “Borrowed Spotlight” won’t be an annual project — “that’s ambitious,” he said, “this one took almost three years” — he’s “happy to keep the project alive as long as it’s needed, whether it’s going to Israel to see the survivors of Oct. 7 from the Nova festival or anywhere else we can go to bring awareness.” 

Proceeds from book sales will support campaigns to educate younger generations about the Holocaust, according to the organizers. Proceeds from a private auction of select prints will benefit two organizations dedicated to Holocaust remembrance and survivor support: Selfhelp, which provides services and assistance to living Holocaust survivors in New York, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. 

The collection’s opening photograph, which did not include a celebrity, was already auctioned this week, going for $20,000. It displays the arm of survivor Joseph Alexander tattooed with a number from his time as an Auschwitz prisoner. 

Holocaust Survivor Avigdor Neuman told his story in front of the Knesset’s Chagall tapestries, in Jerusalem. In Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, thousands gathered to hear survivor Aliza Landau recount her experiences, along with the parents of hostages speaking about their sons’ continued captivity in Gaza. Dozens of teenage volunteer EMTs gathered at a Magen David Adom ambulance station in northern Israel to hear Holocaust survivor David Peleg speak. Women gathered in a Pilates studio in central Israel to hear a fellow member share her mother’s story of survival. 

And in hundreds of living rooms around Israel on Wednesday evening, Holocaust survivors or their children told countless stories to small groups. In the days leading up to Yom Hashoah, which began at sundown Wednesday, Israelis using the navigation app Waze could see the locations of such events and find links to sign up. One of those locations, in the central Israel city of Hod Hasharon, is the home of Adi Altschuler, the founder of Zikaron BaSalon – “memory in the living room.”

In between preparations to host 40 people for her own Yom Hashoah event, Altschuler spoke to Jewish Insider about how her initiative has become a ubiquitous way for Israelis to mark Yom Hashoah, the day that Israel commemorates the Holocaust. Over 2 million people attended Zikaron BaSalon events across the world this year, according to Altschuler.

Altschuler, 38, is an award-winning social entrepreneur who has been a well-known name in Israel for over 20 years since, as a teenager, she founded a youth movement for children with and without special needs to do activities together. 

The idea for Zikaron BaSalon brewed slowly, beginning in 2010, when she forgot about Yom Hashoah altogether, Altschuler said.

“I don’t have a personal family connection to the Holocaust,” she recounted. “I felt that I couldn’t connect to the topic … I was scared of it and deterred from it.” 

Altschuler heard sad music on the radio one day, and then talked to her mother on the phone and asked if something tragic had happened – because in Israel, when there is a terror attack, the music stations only play sad songs. Her mother reminded her that Yom Hashoah was beginning in a few hours and asked her how she planned to commemorate the day.

“I said, I don’t know, maybe I’ll watch ‘Schindler’s List,’” Altschuler said. “My mother was angry with me, so I went with her to a ceremony in Tel Aviv. I was 24 years old and I was the only one there who was under 60.”

“That was when it occurred to me that I am part of the last generation who will meet Holocaust survivors … I said to myself, what will Yom Hashoah look like in 30 years? … What will happen when there aren’t survivors anymore?” she asked.

Altschuler said she thought Yom Hashoah could end up either like Tisha B’Av – the day on which Jews fast to mark the destruction of the Temple, and something that most Israelis don’t observe – or the Passover Seder, which over 90% of Israeli Jews observe.

The following Yom Hashoah, Altschuler once again looked for a way to mark the day, and went to the same ceremony in Tel Aviv. On the way to her car, she heard shouting from an apartment, and could see through the windows that people her age were watching a soccer game.

“I thought, this is why people aren’t at the ceremony. They’re in their living rooms,” she said.

That was when the idea for Zikaron BaSalon started to come together. A year after that, Altschuler invited a Holocaust survivor to her home to tell her story, and 10 friends to hear her. Ultimately, 40 people attended.

For Altschuler, hearing a survivor’s testimony “took the big story of 6 million and turned it into the story of one person,” helping her connect. 

And the survivor herself, who had previously been intimidated by the idea of speaking at Yad Vashem or an entire school, had a chance to tell her story. The survivor started by saying “I hope I won’t disappoint you,” because she was hidden as a child and did not survive a concentration camp. Altschuler said these events, which feature a broad range of survivors with varying experiences, also give recognition to people whose Holocaust stories are different from what people are used to hearing.

“For the survivors who are still with us,” Altschuler said, “they want to be remembered and they want us to remember those who are not with us. It gives them a lot of strength, even when it is difficult for them to tell their stories.”

Altschuler and her friends asked questions and at the end, a friend took out a guitar and they sang songs.

“It wasn’t a ceremony that was forced on us. We created the experience,” she said. “We started a conversation about what we need to remember and what we can learn today. We even argued. It wasn’t sterile. But there was something in the informality of a living room that was right and authentic.” 

Altschuler then asked everyone who was in her living room to invite people to their homes the following year, which meant there were 40 salons in Israel, plus one in south Florida, where a friend of Altschuler’s lived, and where there is a large concentration of Holocaust survivors. 

In the ensuing years, Zikaron BaSalon expanded to 2 million attendees across 65 countries — 1.5 million of whom are in Israel. The president of Germany hosts one each year. Israel’s three major TV channels broadcast live from the events. 

After the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, Altschuler said hearing survivors’ stories had an even deeper meaning: “Zikaron BaSalon gives us hope and shows us how we can get up again after the most destabilizing metaphysical event in human history. These people rose and started families and established a country. We can absorb those values and they give us hope now.”

Altschuler encouraged people around the world to host their own events, noting that the Zikaron BaSalon has resources in many languages and volunteers around the world who can provide kits to prospective hosts. 

“You can do one with your family, or you can do something big — just do it. Just decide to take this responsibility to host, to tell the story … so it’s like a tradition, like a Seder, that our children will grow up with,” she said. 

“The most amazing thing is this doesn’t belong to anyone. My name isn’t on the website,” Altschuler said. “It’s a social movement of individual people who decided to take responsibility for remembering the Holocaust and did it in their own way.”

Abe Foxman, the former Anti-Defamation League national director, offered pointed criticism of the Trump administration in a Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration at the Capitol on Wednesday.

“As a [Holocaust] survivor, my antenna quivers when I see books being banned, when I see people being abducted in the streets, when I see government trying to dictate what universities should teach and whom they should teach. As a survivor who came to this country as an immigrant, I’m troubled when I hear immigrants and immigration being demonized,” Foxman said, to sustained applause from the audience.  

Foxman, who led the ADL for nearly three decades, made the comments while delivering an address at the 2025 Days of Remembrance, which was organized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. 

Foxman also praised the Biden administration and the second Trump administration for each committing to addressing antisemitism. “We live in very chaotic times, where our values, our history, our democracy are being tested. As a survivor, I’m horrified at the explosion of antisemitism — global and in the U.S. I’m appreciative of President Biden’s historic initiative on antisemitism and thankful to President Trump’s strong condemnation of antisemitism and his promise to bring back consequences to antisemitic behavior,” Foxman said.

“We look around us and what do we see? Rampant antisemitism on college campuses and in cities worldwide in the aftermath of that horrific terror attack on our cherished Jewish state, Israel. We see social media algorithms that promote extreme views, conspiracy theories,” Foxman continued, adding that “online conspiracy theories are just one click away from antisemitism.”

“We also see forms of antisemitism that seemed unthinkable: Holocaust denial, distortion, civilization, exploitation and even glorification. We look around and see here in America antisemitism on both the far left and far right. The 20th-century history of Nazism and communism should be an alarm bell as to just how dangerous this is, and not just for us Jews, but for all of society, for all who care about democracy, individual freedom and dignity,” he said.

Foxman also noted that the scourge in domestic antisemitism was reminiscent of how Jew hatred worsened for years prior to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. “Antisemitism [is] not so different from the conspiracy theories that permeated Europe for centuries, long before Hitler was born and helped make the killings of two-thirds of our people possible,” he said.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also spoke at Wednesday’s reception, where he described the Holocaust as a “failure of humanity” and argued that the evil that perpetrated it was akin to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. 

“The Holocaust was a failure of humanity. But as we all know, no matter how hard we try, that kind of hatred continues to exist, just in many, many other forms. It shows up in different ways, and it shows up at different times,” Lutnick said. 

The Oct. 7 attack, Lutnick argued, was “carried out with the same genocidal hatred that fueled Auschwitz, and it’s that same disregard for human life that fueled the Sept. 11 attacks. It’s just the same hate, it just comes at a different time with a different name.”

Becoming emotional, Lutnick vowed “in very, very clear and plain language” that Trump “will never back down from defending the Jewish people, never.”

Award-winning director Jonathan Jakubowicz — the grandson of Polish Holocaust survivors — never imagined he’d make a film about the Holocaust.

“I always felt the whole Shoah was too emotional for me,” the Venezuelan-born filmmaker told Jewish Insider in a recent phone interview from Los Angeles. “And I never thought I could make a movie about it.”

Then he learned the story of Marcel Marceau, the world-famous French actor and mime, who was a Jewish member of the French Resistance during World War II. The rest, as they say, is history, and “Resistance” — starring Jesse Eisenberg (“The Social Network,” “Zombieland”) — hits digital platforms nationwide today. 

The sweeping Holocaust drama — which also stars four-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris and Édgar Ramírez — spotlights the efforts of Marceau and other Jewish resistance fighters to smuggle Jewish children out of France as Nazi forces closed in. 

“What’s the best way to resist?” Eisenberg as Marceau asks in the film. “It’s not to kill them. It’s to survive.”

Jakubowicz, 42, said he was particularly motivated to tell the story of Jewish partisans fighting back during the war. 

“There are so many great movies about World War II, but I always feel like there’s never enough,” he said. “This particular story, I feel like it’s unlike any other… This is a bunch of Jewish kids who decided to not wait, and risked it all to save all the Jews [they could]. And I find that very special and very important to be told in this day and age.”

As a child, Jakubowicz actually saw Marceau — who died in 2007 at age 84 — perform live. But he had no idea about his wartime bravery, or that the actor’s father was murdered in Auschwitz. 

“I was actually shocked to even hear that he was Jewish,” the director said. “My jaw dropped when I heard that, not only was he Jewish, but he used his art — in a way created his art — in order to save Jewish children escaping from the Nazis.” Jakubowicz said that, as a filmmaker, he is always on the lookout for good stories, “and suddenly you find a story like that and you’re like, how has this not been made into a movie before?” 

He was able to track down Georges Loinger, Marceau’s cousin, who served alongside him in the French resistance, and died in 2018 at the age of 108. 

“I was able to meet with him, and he told me a lot of what you see in the film, firsthand — he was the only one still alive in that group who saved the children,” Jakubowicz recalled.

The director said shooting the film in Germany and the Czech Republic was a very emotional experience — including one scene in Nuremberg, the site of major Nazi rallies in the 1920s and 30s. 

“We literally shot that scene [in Nuremberg] the night after the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh,” Jakubowicz said. “And the whole thing just felt crazy. Jesse [Eisenberg] is an American Jew and me, surrounded by a crew of Jews and Germans, shooting a silent performance of a Jewish artist in the place that Hitler built for his rallies — there was a level of significance that I can’t compare to anything I’ve ever done in my life.” 

Director Jonathan Jakubowicz (right) on the set of ‘Resistance’ with actor Jesse Eisenberg. (IFC Films)

Jakubowicz said there were many such moments during filming that have stuck with him ever since. 

“There was a night where we wrapped right before Shabbat, and we gathered the whole crew on set and we lit the candles and said the Shabbat blessing,” he recalled. Many of the German crew working on the film “said they’ve never seen that in their lives. And a lot of them were teary-eyed, very moved by the whole scene.”

Throughout the shoot, Jakubowicz said, “there wasn’t a day where we were, you know, just shooting a movie. Everything felt very, very emotional.”

Jakubowicz, who was born in Venezuela in 1978, rose to fame for his 2005 film “Secuestro Express,” about a kidnapping, based on his own experience. It was a huge box office hit in Venezuela, but prompted angry backlash from the government, and led the filmmaker to flee for Los Angeles not long after. His 2016 film “Hands of Stone,” starring Robert De Niro, premiered at the Cannes Festival that year. 

The filmmaker said his family has always been proud of his work, but this movie struck a more personal chord with them. When he first showed it to his mother — a doctor who lives in Tel Aviv — “she watched it three times back to back.” 

One of the characters in the film, a young orphan who is saved by Marceau, is based largely on the life story of Jakubowicz’s aunt. 

“She was hidden during the war in an orphanage run by the Catholic Church, just like the girl in the movie,” he said. “And so in a way the movie is a bit of an homage to my own family.” When the film screened at the Miami Film Festival several weeks ago, his aunt was in the audience, along with his father and brother.

The film was originally slated to hit select theaters today, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, it will become available instead today on digital platforms including Amazon, iTunes, Google Play and Apple TV. 

“In a way I feel like it’s a good movie to watch right now, because it really gives you perspective,” Jakubowicz said. “We’re all convinced we’re living in the worst moment in history, but it’s really not.”

The developer Bruce Ratner will succeed Robert M. Morgenthau, the former Manhattan district attorney, as chairman of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, The New York Times reports. 

(L-R) Bruce Ratner, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, and Jay Z

Mr. Ratner will initially serve as chairman-elect, a new position created to help in an orderly succession. Following a transition period, Mr. Morgenthau will become chairman emeritus – also a new position, created to recognize his service as chairman since 1982.

 

Mr. Ratner has served on the board since 1996. He was the co-chair of the building committee, and his firm, Forest City Ratner Companies, provided pro-bono construction project management for the museum’s expansion, the Robert M. Morgenthau Wing, which opened in 2003.

 

The museum, which is located in Battery Park City and opened in 1997, is dedicated to educating people about Jewish life before, during and after the Holocaust.

 

“I strongly believe that Bob’s sense of justice and the power of the law are derived directly from his involvement with these issues,” Mr. Ratner said in a statement.

 

“The Museum of Jewish Heritage reminds us that we must always be vigilant,” he added, “and that we must all be prepared to say ‘Never again.’ ”