Donald Trump. Photo: Twitter.

JNS.org – President Donald Trump vowed to fight against evil in his statement marking Friday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, on the 72nd anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

“I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my presidency, and my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of good,” Trump said.

“Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world,” he added.

Trump’s statement made no mention of the Jewish people or antisemitism.

“It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust,” said Trump. “Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest.‎ As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent.”

Meanwhile, other world leaders spoke of the rise of extremism, including antisemitism, in their respective statements for the commemoration.

“Tragically, and contrary to our resolve, antisemitism continues to thrive,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement from UN headquarters in New York. “We are also seeing a deeply troubling rise in extremism, xenophobia, racism and anti-Muslim hatred. Irrationality and intolerance are back.”

Guterres pledged to “be in the front line of the battle against anti-Semitism and all other forms of hatred.”

Germany’s outgoing Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that his country will never forget the crimes committed by the Nazi regime.

“History should be a lesson, warning and incentive all at the same time. There can and should be no end to remembrance,” he said.

Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, who attended a ceremony with Holocaust survivors at the site of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland, said that the suffering of the Holocaust’s victims was a “wound that…can never be healed and should never be forgotten.”

“No one can understand this suffering,” Szydlo said. “I want a message to go out again from this place today that what happened in this German camp was evil…An evil that can be overcome with good. Memory and truth are our responsibility, they are our weapons against evil.”