Photo by GPO

Minister Ruhama Avraham Balila,
Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, Tommy Lapid,
Chairman of the Board of Directors, Avner Shalev,
Director General of the Prime Minister’s Office, Raanan Dinur,
Chairman of the Center for Survivor Organizations, Noah Pelog,
Distinguished Guests,

All my life, I wondered in my heart of hearts whether or not the statement that the State of Israel was a miracle, that its establishment is a miracle, was true.  Recently the President of France told me during a personal conversation that he thought the State of Israel was the miracle of the 20th century.  While we were sitting here, when the emcee said this, my friend Tommy Lapid, in a spontaneous reaction, whispered to me, “Why the miracle of the 20th century?  It was the miracle of all history.”  I still do not know if it is true to say that it is a miracle or that there is something more profound here, more complex, more dramatic than something miraculous which cannot be explained the way that things develop and are built and exist are.  We will not resolve this question at this time, but we can say with certainty that the State of Israel is a wondrous phenomenon, unique in human history.  There was never such a human phenomenon in the history of any other people; there was never the phenomenon of a people returning to its land, of reviving its language, renewing its culture, rehabilitating its national and sovereign existence in an ancient land as happened to this people – as happened to us in the middle of the 20th century and since.

One of the wonderful and moving phenomena connected to the establishment and renewal of the existence of a Jewish sovereignty in our land is the Holocaust survivors who came here, fought here, fell here, built here, created here, and in fact succeeded – together with others – to lay the foundations for transformation of the State of Israel into what it is today.

Photo by GPO

Last year we spoke of Holocaust survivors in other contexts, and these too cannot be forgotten – nor do we wish to.  During this unavoidable process we grew up, and at times our feelings became a little dulled and blunt; we forgot that among them were many who no longer had the strength or the capability, and we did not know beforehand that we must pay attention to them and take care of them and help them as we should have understood and felt – and they were deserving.  So in the heat of this argument and the things we said of ourselves regarding what we did not know to do and which perhaps we did a little last year – we forgot to speak of what the Holocaust survivors did in order to make the State of Israel what it is.  We spoke of their suffering and not of their strength; we spoke of their distress and did not mention their contribution.  We spoke of the squalor in which some of them lived and did not emphasize enough the tremendous strength with which they succeeded in rising out of the infinite depths to the heights to which they rose in leading the life of this country.

Something of this can be seen at this exhibition – which I managed to see in my quick glance of the captions and highlights.  As a result of the impossible race which is the pace of life in this country, we are not aware of what occurs on a daily basis; there is a deficiency in our ability to see clearly all the components of the larger picture because everything is mixed up and blended together.  Something interfered with our ability to percieve that some of the things which are important in all fields of life were created by people who came from a different world which we native-born Israelis can never really fully understand because we were born here in this unique place – it has no equal and it is ours.  However, we did not come from the place that the Holocaust survivors came from.  We see some areas in our spheres of life; some of the most prominent symbols which depict our lives; some statements and sentences which are an inseparable part of the most pronounced ethos of Israeliness.  These are, in fact, the creative fruits of people who came from somewhere else, for whom the land of Israel and Israeliness were never taken for granted, who were considered strangers when they transformed these symbols to those which represent what we are proud to present as Israeli and Israeliness.  Perhaps it should be said that we are proud, as this is the best and most beautiful part of our Israeliness.  When we see it here, we gain a more accurate perspective of the contribution, weight and significance which the survivors had on the life of the State of Israel, in what it was and what it has yet to become.

On behalf of the Government of Israel, I thank you for choosing to open this exhibition on the eve of Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day.  The bottom line is not what was or even what is, but rather primarily what will be.  From these depths, from this strength, from this inspiration, there is no limit to what this country can design for itself.

Thank you.