One of the leading figures in Holocaust commemoration in the UK has expressed growing concern about “Nazi rhetoric” emanating from the United States.

Olivia Marks-Woldman, chief executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, denounced threatening language being used in the run-up to the day of national commemoration in January, in the wake of Donald Trump’s surprise election win earlier this month.

She said: “We are gravely concerned about the recent Nazi rhetoric made by white supremacists in America. Such language is dangerous and intimidating, and has no place in civilised society.”

Get The Jewish News Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

Marks-Woldman said it stood in stark contrast to the themed focus for Holocaust Memorial Day 2017, which asks: ‘How can life go on?’

She said it was “a question that confronts the difficulties in rebuilding post-Holocaust and post-Genocide whilst ideologies such as these persist,” adding: “HMD events bring people together, they don’t pull them apart. Participants reflect on the past, they don’t trivialise or deny it.”

Many Jews in both the U.K. and U.S. have expressed unease about president-elect Donald Trump’s comments about Muslims, Mexicans and women, arguing that the language was “divisive”.