Israel's remembrance center Yad Vashem on Wednesday (April 12) condemned US White House spokesman Sean Spicer's Holocaust comments and urge him to visit the museum's website to learn about World War Two history and Hitler's extermination camps.
Spicer triggered an uproar on Tuesday (April 11) by saying Adolf Hitler did not use chemical weapons. He apologized after his comments drew immediate criticism on social media and elsewhere for overlooking the fact that millions of Jews were killed in Nazi gas chambers. As Spicer told CNN: "It was a mistake. I shouldn't have done it and I won't do it again." A senior member of Israel's government welcomed Spicer's apology on Wednesday.
The White House Press Secretary made the assertion at a daily news briefing, during a discussion about the April 4 chemical weapons attack in Syria that killed 87 people. Washington has blamed the attack on the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
In an instantaneous response to Spicer's controversial remarks, Israeli educators on Wednesday launched a Holocaust education project .
Yoram Dori, former spokesman for the International March of the Living and a senior adviser to late president Shimon Peres, announced the launch of the "6 Million Brother-The 3rd Generation" project, which calls on students and youngsters across the globe to write songs describing the emotions they feel when visiting Nazi death camps in Poland.
The initiative is inspired by fallen IDF soldier Yair Engel, who wrote a song called "Six Million Brothers" after, as a high school student, he visited the concentration camps. The song was read out at a memorial service held in Auschwitz. After Engel's death, his parents found the songs he wrote and his father read Six Million Brothers at a memorial ceremony held together with Peres in Treblinka.
The project is a cooperation between an association dedicated to the commemoration of Engel's memory, together with Prof. Zehavit Gross of Bar-Ilan University, who researches youth writing about the Holocaust.
A special professional committee will examine all the songs and choose from them a repertoire which will be used to compile an album and to put on a show dedicated to promoting the memory of the Holocaust and the commemoration of Engel.
Dori noted that the project is one of many other activities aimed at tackling ignorance and Holocaust deniers, run by organizations such as March of the Living and the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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