President Joe Biden said he had taken every single one of his children and grandchildren to the Nazi concentration camp Dachau when they reached the age of 14, to educate them about the horrors of the Holocaust.
Mr Biden raised his voice and slammed his hands down on the lectern as he spoke to Jewish community leaders about the “profound impact” it had had on his young family members.
He earlier said that he refused to be silent on the attacks perpetrated by Hamas on Israel, saying “silence is complicity”.
It comes as Israel’s military said 1,200 Israelis have died since terror group Hamas first launched its attack on Saturday – with more than 2,700 injured in the violence.
The number of Palestinians killed in the conflict has risen from 1,055 to 1,100, according to Gaza’s health ministry, with a total of 5,339 people injured.
During an event to discuss the White House’s strategy to counter antisemitism on Wednesday, Mr Biden said that the attack by Hamas was “a campaign of pure cruelty” against the Jewish people.
“I would argue it is the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust… one of the worst chapters in human history to remind us all that that expression I learned from my dad early on: ‘silence is complicity’,” he said.
“Silence is complicity. It really is. And I want you to know, I think you’ve already figured it out, I refuse to be silent and I know you refuse to be silent as well.”
US President Joe Biden— (REUTERS)
He later continued, becoming louder and more impassioned: “That’s why I took my kids – every one when they turned 14 years old, one at a time, I put them on a plane and took them to Dachau.
“I wanted them to see that you could not not know what was going on. Walking through those gates, you could not fail to understand as a country what was going on. That’s a fact.
“It had a profound impact on my children and my grandchildren.
“Some thought taking a 14-year-old grandchild does not make sense but I took them one at a time – I’ve got three more to go. Folks, it’s important.”
