Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s emotional visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau marked something of a triumph for Jewish Americans: one of their own representing the U.S. at the epicenter of the Nazi genocide that tried — but failed — to wipe out their people.
But Emhoff’s six-day visit to Europe is also highlighting a painful reality. Poland, from where his family fled persecution more than a century ago, faces rising antisemitism, along with the U.S. and other countries, Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, has taken up the fight against it as his signature issue, even though President Joe Biden’s administration has few tools outside the bully pulpit to stamp it out.
Emhoff said he was deeply moved by his Friday visit to the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camp, where roughly 1.1 million people were killed during the Holocaust, more than 90% of them Jews. As snow flurries fell from a gray sky, Emhoff wiped away tears when he placed a wreath at a wall where SS troops executed thousands. He later described seeing human hair and children’s shoes taken from the Nazis’ victims and hearing from survivors.
“Until you actually are there, and you’re at that gate, and you see those buildings, and you see the barbed wire, and you see just what it was, you just can’t comprehend it,” Emhoff said Saturday in an interview with Bloomberg News.
Friday was the 78th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation, and Emhoff was the top-ranking U.S. official to attend this year’s observance ceremony. He held other events to learn more about the persecution of Jews in Europe and collect information to aid the U.S. government’s still-developing strategy on antisemitism.
Emhoff on Saturday visited the Oskar Schindler Enamel Factory in Krakow, Poland, where he toured an exhibit on “Schindler’s List,” the 1,000 Jewish people the German factory owner saved during the Holocaust — a story popularized by a 1993 movie.
He ate a Shabbat dinner with Jewish community members in the city, which was a center of Jewish life before World War II, and hosted a roundtable meeting with leaders of Jewish groups and other organizations. On Sunday, he plans to visit Gorlice, the city where it’s believed his great-grandfather and family lived before coming to the U.S.
Emhoff, 58, is the first Jewish spouse of a U.S. president or vice president. His trip is his most ambitious effort yet to advance the Biden administration’s work fighting antisemitism, for which he has served as a front man. He said antisemitism is a growing problem in the U.S. and worldwide in large part because of “disinformation” and the prominent people who spread it.
“They either propagate antisemitism or the tropes that underlie antisemitism, or when there are big, prominent antisemitic acts, they don’t speak out. They lack the courage to speak out. And that is not leadership,” he said in the interview.
When asked, Emhoff declined to name names. But in November, former President Donald Trump hosted Nick Fuentes, a White nationalist and Holocaust denier, at his Florida estate along with Kanye West, the rapper known as Ye, who has praised Adolf Hitler. Trump, who has launched a new bid for president that could pit him against Biden in 2024, has also played on the antisemitic trope that Jewish Americans share dual loyalty with Israel.
The Anti-Defamation League reported 2,717 incidents of antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault in 2021, the highest number since it began tracking them in 1979. Watchdog groups have also reported that hate speech, including antisemitism, spiked on Twitter after the company was bought by Elon Musk, who restored many suspended accounts.
Biden in December formed a government task force to create a national strategy to counter antisemitism. Emhoff is soliciting recommendations for the group in meetings. In Krakow, roundtable participants asked for U.S. legal assistance in cases involving antisemitic incidents. Next week, Emhoff will host gatherings of European envoys and interfaith leaders in Berlin.
Speaking out
Despite condemnation from Biden and others, antisemitic incidents in the U.S. remained at a high level in 2022, according to preliminary data from the ADL. Still, Emhoff said publicly condemning anti-Jewish hatred is among the most important things he and others can do.
“When you speak out, you educate and so much of antisemitism is based on these tropes that are just not true,” Emhoff said. “Leaders need to lead.”
Emhoff said Biden has encouraged him to be a prominent voice against antisemitism, During a meeting in the Oval Office before the trip, the president shared how his father told him as a child about the Holocaust and how he brought his children and grandchildren to the Dachau concentration camp.
Emhoff said it was “inspiring” to hear the pride community members expressed to him about his historic first after Biden’s inauguration.
“My wife, the vice president, saw that too and she really encouraged me to lean in to it and continue to speak up and speak out,” he said. “I realized very quickly being the first Jewish person married to a president or vice president, that actually became as big a deal as being the first man in this role.”
