JD Vance Forgets to Mention Jews in His Holocaust Speech

Vice President JD Vance is currently facing significant backlash following his 2026 International Holocaust Remembrance Day address. The controversy centers on his decision to omit any specific mention of Jewish people or antisemitism in the official speech, a move critics are calling a "universalization" of the Holocaust that erases its primary victims.

In his remarks, Vance focused on the "evil of totalitarianism" and the "suffering of all innocent victims of World War II." While he spoke broadly about the horrors of the era, the absence of the word "Jew" sparked immediate condemnation from Jewish advocacy groups and historians.

Organizations like the ADL and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) have argued that failing to name the Jewish victims effectively ignores the unique, industrialized nature of the Final Solution, which specifically targeted the Jewish people for total annihilation.

The backlash is intensified by the memory of Vance's February 2025 speech in Munich, where he visited the Dachau concentration camp but then urged European leaders to drop their "firewall" against far-right parties like Germany’s AfD, some of whose members have been accused of downplaying the Holocaust.

The administration has pushed back against the "trouble," with spokespeople emphasizing that the Vice President’s message was intended to be "inclusive" and "focused on the universal lessons of human depravity." They pointed to his February 2025 visit to Dachau with a survivor as evidence of his deep respect for the history.

This isn't just a debate over semantics; it's a major political problem for Vance for three reasons: