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.

White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff predicted on Thursday that the Abraham Accords will “seriously expand” in response to the end of fighting in Gaza. Witkoff was addressing attendees at an event commemorating the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks.

“No leader has done more for the Jewish people or the State of Israel than President Trump,” Witkoff, speaking at an event at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, said. “He moved our embassy to Jerusalem, he recognized Israel’s sovereignty over Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and the Golan Heights. He forged the Abraham peace Accords, which will seriously expand now,” Witkoff said. 

The White House envoy, who returned from the region earlier this week after the implementation of the first phase of the ceasefire, posited that Trump winning a second term last November was “the major breakthrough of this conflict.” 

“The moment that result was declared, the world changed, and so did the negotiations. Hamas and every party in the region understood that President Trump, his return to office, meant strength, accountability and action,” Witkoff explained. “Even before taking office, President Trump made it clear he wanted progress by the day he stepped into the Oval Office, and shortly thereof, we struck a ceasefire and hostage release deal that began to turn the tide.”

“The success of that first hostage release was made possible by President Trump’s 20-point plan, a strategy that united the Arab world behind this effort. Nations like Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and many others came aboard because peace and civility are in everybody’s interests,” he added.

Witkoff went on to commend the Arab state negotiators and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former senior advisor, arguing that they collectively pressured Hamas to release the remaining hostages. All 20 living hostages were freed on Monday, while the terror group has slow-walked the repatriation of the bodies of deceased hostages 

“In the final phase, at President Trump’s directive, Jared Kushner, a great American, and I flew to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the last round of negotiations, led by Qatari, Egyptian and Turkey’s mediators. They were incredible and without them we would not be where we are today,” Witkoff said. “Jared was tremendous. Together, we convinced Hamas that keeping the remaining 20 hostages was no longer an asset, it was a liability, and they began to believe it.”

Witkoff acknowledged that Israel has yet to receive the remains of the deceased hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza, but said the administration was working toward their release.

“We didn’t get everybody back. We’ve gotten [nine deceased hostages] back and we will pursue the return of the … deceased until they all go home, and I’m confident that they will,” Witkoff said. 

Witkoff also referenced his several recent visits to Gaza during his remarks, pointing out that Gazans he’s engaged with “want peace too. They want stability, opportunity, a better life for their children. A future for Gazans must include jobs, education, hope, aspirations, not just guns and violence. Israel should never have to live under the threat of rockets flying at its people or the fear of terrorist attacks, but Gaza’s people must be able to live a decent life as well.”

“We have to be clear, Hamas must unequivocally disarm. They have no future in Gaza,” he continued. “Only when extremism ends does prosperity begin.”

Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, Trump’s nominee to serve as antisemitism envoy; Ben Ladany, a former IDF sergeant in the elite Oketz K-9 Unit who was shot seven times in November 2023 while fighting Hamas in Gaza; and Almog Meir Jan, an Israeli hostage held by a Palestinian journalist after being taken from the Nova music festival, also spoke at the event. 

Nat Shaffir, a Holocaust survivor and USHMM volunteer, and 18 other Holocaust survivors, were among those in attendance, in addition to Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL); Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the executive director of the White House task force overseeing the 2026 FIFA World Cup whom Trump appointed in his first term to sit on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council; Alex Witkoff, the son of Steve Witkoff and CEO of the Witkoff Group who also sits on the council; Rabbi Levi Shemtov, executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad); and Alina Habba, the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey and the president’s former personal attorney.