JERUSALEM _ President Donald Trump, visiting Israel's national Holocaust memorial, paid solemn tribute Tuesday to the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis, calling it "history's darkest hour."
At the memorial, Yad Vashem, Trump lighted an eternal flame and laid a wreath honoring the victims. He called the Nazi campaign of extermination against European Jewry "the most savage crime against God and his children."
"Millions of wonderful and beautiful lives _ men, women and children _ were extinguished as part of a systematic attempt to eliminate the Jewish people," said the president. "It is our solemn duty to remember, to mourn, to grieve and to honor every single life that was so cruelly and viciously taken."
Trump's 30-minute visit, on his second and final day in Israel, was briefer than his hosts had wanted. Almost all foreign dignitaries who come to Jerusalem make a lengthy stop at the museum and memorial.
Though short, the visit had emotional moments. Trump was presented with a replica of a personal album that had belonged to a 16-year-old Holocaust victim, Ester Goldstein. Her surviving sister, Margot Herschenbaum, burst into tears after Trump shook her hand.
Trump and his wife, Melania, were accompanied by Trump's daughter Ivanka, a convert to Judaism, and her husband, Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jew.
In remarks delivered after the flame-lighting ceremony, Trump hailed the "unbreakable spirit of the Jewish people." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking after him, called Trump's visit "historic" because he was the first American president to include Israel on his first overseas trip as president.
