Letter published in the Boston Globe:

LETTERS
White House ignores history in its Holocaust statement

FEBRUARY 01, 2017
YOUR EDITORIAL “A shocking Holocaust omission from the White House” (Jan. 31) was jarring. I just attended a reading of Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” a memoir of the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald. There is no doubt that Hitler wanted to eliminate the Jewish people. In his sick view, the Aryan race was superior and all other people were expendable, the Jews being the priority. It isn’t nitpicking to distinguish the Holocaust as a singularly Jewish experience.

The statement from the White House on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which omitted the fact that the intent of the Nazis was to exterminate the Jewish people, reveals insensitivity and purposeful ignorance of history.

The suffering and pain after the Holocaust has not disappeared. Intentional infliction of mental distress is illegal.

The statement of President Trump further demonstrates the administration’s tone-deaf attitude. Therefore, we must speak louder and more often in order to be heard.
The victims’ memories require nothing less.

Steven A. Ludsin

East Hampton, N.Y.

The writer was a member of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust under Jimmy Carter and of the US Holocaust Memorial Council.