The honorary chairman of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) has accused the White House of “gratuitously violating the memory of the murdered millions” by its failure to mention Jewish victims in its statement marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Professor Yehuda Bauer, the prominent Holocaust historian who chairs the alliance, pointed out that “all IHRA Member Countries, including the USA, one of the founders, are committed to the 2000 Stockholm Declaration which defines the Holocaust as the genocide of the Jews in World War II, in line with repeated US statements, and not as a term that includes all the horrors committed by Nazi Germany, claiming millions of innocent victims aside from the Holocaust.

“We recognise the unprecedented policy of total annihilation aimed at the Jewish people. However, the Jews are not even mentioned in the Presidential statement, thus gratuitously violating the memory of the murdered millions.”

Professor Bauer also noted that “on the same day, an Executive Order was issued by the President's office, banning refugees from entering the US, singling out persons from mainly Muslim countries.

“This constitutes, in effect, discrimination on religious grounds, violating the Refugee Convention of 1951, of which the US is a signatory. It raises possible troubling parallels with the refusal of most countries during the Nazi period to accept refugees, especially Jewish ones.”

The White House has shown no regret for the wording of its statement, with a spokeswoman saying that “we are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered.”

Last week the Politico website reported that the State Department had drafted a statement which included a direct mention of Jews, but that the White House had prevented its publication. The administration insisted that it had not been aware of the existence of a State Department version until after it published its own statement. However, Politico reported that the state department officials had been under the impression that their statement was being drafted for the White House to use.