President Donald Trump failed to mention Jews in his Holocaust remembrance statement on Friday and made no qualms about the omission, an oversight the national president of the Zionist Organization of America is calling "painful."
Morton Klein is also asking Trump and his chief of staff Reince Priebus to rectify the flub.
"We, at ZOA, know and appreciate that President Donald Trump is a great friend and supporter of America’s greatest ally, the Jewish State of Israel and the Jewish people. We also know that he was the Grand Marshall at NYC’s Israel day parade and has an orthodox Jewish daughter and grandchildren attending an orthodox day school," Klein wrote on the ZOA website on Sunday.
"Nevertheless, especially as a child of holocaust survivors, I and ZOA are compelled to express our chagrin and deep pain at President Trump, in his Holocaust Remembrance Day Message, omitting any mention of anti-Semitism and the six million Jews who were targeted and murdered by the German Nazi regime and others."
Trump's statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day did not mention the details of the death of six million Jews under the leadership of German dictator Adolf Hitler, but pointed to remembering the victims, survivors and heroes of the Holocaust.
"Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest. As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent," he continued, again referring only to "the innocent."
Klein said he lost dozens of family members to genocide and that his father was a survivor of Auschwitz who lost his entire family.
Priebus on MSNBC said there weren’t any regrets about the statement and that he wasn't whitewashing anything.
"As Elie Wiesel frequently stated, 'while not all victims were Jews, all Jews were victims,'" wrote Klein. "Thus we were especially shocked by the disgraceful statement by Chief of Staff Reince Priebus proclaiming on "Meet The Press," when asked about the conspicuous omission of Jews from the Holocaust statement, “"I don’t regret the words, Chuck [Todd]."
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