U.S. second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, lays wreaths honoring Holocaust victims on the former Auschwitz web site on Friday in Oswiecim, Poland.

Omar Marques/Getty Images

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Omar Marques/Getty Images

U.S. second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, lays wreaths honoring Holocaust victims on the former Auschwitz web site on Friday in Oswiecim, Poland.

Omar Marques/Getty Images

This International Holocaust Remembrance Day, authorities officers from varied international locations are gathering on the web site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau focus camp to recollect victims and honor survivors.

Among them, for the primary time, is the primary Jewish partner of a U.S. president or vice chairman.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff is visiting Krakow, Poland and Berlin this week to advertise each Holocaust consciousness and the Biden administration’s efforts to fight antisemitism.

His journey will embody a cease at Oskar Schindler‘s manufacturing facility, a Shabbat dinner with an area Jewish neighborhood, a gathering with Ukrainian refugees, a roundtable with interfaith leaders and visits to a number of museums and different historic websites.

And it is extra about listening and buying and selling concepts than delivering any particular insurance policies, senior administration officers advised reporters on a Wednesday name. Emhoff — whose nice grandparents fled persecution from modern-day Poland within the early nineteenth century — has been on the forefront of the Biden administration’s efforts to address growing antisemitism in current months.

“The visit certainly has a special significance … for him, for our administration, for American Jews and, frankly, Jews all around the world,” an official mentioned. “And it’s not lost on us that it’s a pretty incredible moment for him to return as an American Jew, as the first second gentleman … and work on these issues.”

The Biden administration is worried about social media’s function

Antisemitism is increasingly visible within the U.S. today, with high-profile figures in leisure, sports activities and politics publicly selling tropes and conspiracy theories, and the variety of recorded hateful incidents directed at Jewish individuals on a steady climb.

Over 85% of Americans imagine at the very least one anti-Jewish trope, in keeping with outcomes of an Anti-Defamation League survey launched earlier this month. Twenty % of Americans imagine six or extra such tropes, the best degree it has measured in many years.

“Modern technology and the internet, with social media in particular, allows ideas to spread with unprecedented rapidity,” a senior administration official mentioned.

The Biden administration is trying to fight rampant antisemitism, together with pushing again towards Holocaust denial and disinformation. Emhoff’s journey is a part of these efforts.

In December, Biden created a task force with representatives from greater than 20 federal companies, devoted to preventing antisemitism, Islamophobia and different types of bias discrimination.

The group is holding weekly conferences, reviewing actions different international locations have taken and dealing to supply and implement a nationwide technique, officers mentioned.

Emhoff held a White House roundtable about antisemitism with a dozen leaders from the Jewish neighborhood in December, saying it was “just the beginning of this conversation.

“As lengthy as I’ve this microphone, I’m going to talk out towards hate, bigotry and lies,” Emhoff mentioned on the roundtable.

Since then, he is additionally met with the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism and spoken to Jewish students at Arizona State University throughout a go to to the state.

On Thursday, Biden issued a statement remembering the Holocaust and reminding individuals of the hate that exists right this moment.

“Across our country, we are seeing swastikas on cars, antisemitic banners on bridges, verbal and physical attacks against Jewish businesses and Jewish Americans – even Holocaust denialism,” he mentioned. “It’s vile. It goes against everything we value as Americans. And each of us must speak out against this poison.”

On the itinerary: conferences and memorials

A day after arriving in Krakow, Emhoff headed about 40 miles west to Auschwitz-Birkenau State Memorial to take a tour that included wreath-laying and candle-lighting ceremonies.

Then he attended the commemoration of the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the focus camp, together with some survivors and a number of other authorities officers, together with Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. particular envoy to observe and fight antisemitism.

On Friday night time, Emhoff will attend a Shabbat dinner again in Krakow with members of the Jewish neighborhood.

Saturday’s deliberate occasions embody a go to to Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory Museum (Schindler famously saved greater than 1,200 Polish Jews by using them in his plant throughout World War II) , an antisemitism roundtable and a gathering with Ukrainian refugees.

On Sunday, Emhoff will tour Krakow’s Jewish Quarter and go to historic websites within the southern city of Gorlice earlier than heading to Berlin.

On Monday, he’ll take part in a gathering with different antisemitism envoys on the Topography of Terror Museum, and tour each that museum in addition to the Museum of Jewish Life. Later, he’ll meet with German neighborhood leaders and authorities officers at a dinner hosted by the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Amy Gutmann (whose late father escaped Nazi Germany).

Emhoff will wrap up his journey on Tuesday with a roundtable with Jewish, Muslim and Christian religion leaders, then meet with Ukrainian refugees at Oranienburgerstrasse Synagogue in addition to go to memorials devoted to victims of Nazi persecution and meet with Holocaust survivors.