Ahead of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz, senior U.S. State Department diplomats on Wednesday discussed U.S. policy to commemorating the Holocaust, including helping survivors of the Shoah.
“I wish I could say that humanity had learned its lessons from the Holocaust, and that the lessons were permanent, and that we have moved on,” said Cherrie Daniels, the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, at a briefing for reporters at the department. “But I think the recent resurgence of anti-Semitism around the world and here at home is a reality that we cannot deny or ignore.”
“We’re committed to help the 80,000 or so survivors of the Holocaust who live here in the United States achieve a measure of justice … when it comes to the material losses suffered during the Holocaust,” she added. “We develop and implement U.S. policy to return Holocaust-era assets to their rightful owners, compensation for wrongs committed during the Holocaust.”
Daniels also said, “As you know, because of the Holocaust, there are many cemeteries, synagogues and other Jewish properties throughout Europe which don’t even have the smallest of Jewish communities remaining to care for them. So this is an issue we also address with the governments of those countries.”
“[They’re] the far-right ethnic supremacists, the radical-left anti-Zionists and the militant Islamists,” he said. “It is a fundamental principle of our work that we do not rank these sources in importance nor do we minimize any of them. All three are dangerous, and all must be combated.”