Trump is the First President to Skip Visiting Holocaust Monument Since 1989
- By Kelly Frazier --
- 07 Jul 2017 --
CC BY 2.0
President Trump did not visit the Warsaw Ghetto Monument.
US President Donald Trump came under criticism by Jewish Polish leaders when he did not pay a visit to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memento structure while visiting Poland. The leaders, which included Leslaw Piszewski, president of the Union of Jewish Communities of Poland, Anna Chipczynska, president of the Jewish Community of Warsaw, and Michael Schudrich, the chief rabbi of Poland. They termed the presidential absence of the site as a kind of insult.
Trump is the First President to Skip Visiting Holocaust Monument Since 1989[/tweetthis]
Presidential records reveal that every American President from 1989 onwards has visited Warsaw Ghetto when they first visited Poland. The example has been set by President George H.W Bush when he stopped at the site in July of 1989. He was in the country to attend a ceremony a few months after the Communist government was toppled in the country. He was followed to the site by President Bill Clinton in 1994. After Clinton came President George W. Bush, who went there in 2001. Former President Barack Obama also visited the Warsaw Ghetto in 2011.
These points were mentioned in the statement sent out by the Polish Jewish leaders. They pointed out that post-Communist Poland from 1989 onwards have seen American Presidents and Vice-Presidents who came to Warsaw visited the site. The US leaders represented Americans who played a major role in destroying fascism. The Jewish leaders added that the site commemorated Shoah victims and condemned those who part in that evil deed.
To come to Trump's defense, the US President's visit to Poland was a little more than a stop-over with the visit lasting barely a day. Although President Trump could not make a visit to the Warsaw site, Ivanka Trump, the President's daughter and a recent Jewish convert, visited the Warsaw Ghetto monument and placed a wreath. She subsequently wrote about it in her Facebook post, terming it is an extremely moving life experience and that she was privileged to experience.
Trump's presidential jet touched down on Polish soil on July 5 in advance of the G20 leaders' meeting scheduled to be held in Germany during the latter days of July's first week. According to presidential aides, he will commemorate World War II horrors suffered by Poland during that time. He will speak at Warsaw's Krasinski Square on the subject of the Warsaw Uprising Monument. This monument extols the bravery of resistance fighters from the Polish general population.
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