Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday condemned the vandalizing of 154 headstones in Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City in the St. Louis area, and praised the local community for coming together to support the cleanup effort, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
“There is no place in America for hatred or acts of prejudice or violence or anti-Semitism,” Pence said, adding “I must tell you, people of Missouri are inspiring the nation by your love and care for this place. You make us all proud.”
Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens was also on hand, and told the crowd that he had spoken on the phone with President Donald Trump, who “asked me, on his behalf, to personally thank all of you. Thank you for standing up in the fight against anti-Semitism.”
“And he said thank you for showing the people of the world that what happened here the other night is not who America is. It’s not who Missouri is. This is who Missouri is,” Greitens said, gesturing at the hundreds who had come to help with the cleanup.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, at least one local Jewish volunteer who said her family members were buried at the cemetery, remained unimpressed. Jeanine Molloff, a resident of Overland, told the paper that “to bring Mr. Pence here was a horrible insult,” adding, “I will not let the Trump administration flip the script,” because, she believes, Trump “placated to Nazis” during his candidacy and presidency.
This was blatantly unfair to Vice President Pence, who last Sunday visited the site of the Dachau concentration camp near Munich, established by the Nazis in 1933. Trump later tweeted: “During the tour today of Dachau, survivor Abba Noar recalled to me the horrors of the Holocaust, ‘then the American troops came.'”