Madam Speaker,
Government Ministers,
Members of Knesset,
Members of the Diplomatic Corps,
On January 27, 1945, in the middle of the fifth winter of the World War, fighters of the Red Army liberated Auschwitz. This liberation day was important – very symbolic – but from every practical perspective, it did not change much. The valley of monstrous killing fully realized its diabolic goal; the Jews of occupied Europe were massacred by the Nazi enemy and there was almost no one left to save.
The six million Jews were not the sole victims of World War II. However, in the fierce struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, the innocent and unprotected Jewish people stood at one end – and the evil and murderous Nazi regime stood at the other. Therefore, the Jews were the ultimate target for the enemy’s hatred. They did not serve as any military threat, but they represented, through the moral legacy, the complete opposite of Nazi ideology. That is why they were doomed to destruction.
Over the years, even if at a delay, the world internalized and recognized the singularity of the Holocaust of the Jewish people and its universal significance. For never in human history, ever since G-d created man and man created the devil, has such calculated genocide come forth from the heart of an allegedly enlightened culture. Never has such a monstrous state mechanism been so refined and planned in the name of insane racial teachings in order to dehumanize people, to bleed them and methodically destroy them. We, the Jewish people, were the first victims of the Nazi evil, but the conclusions drawn from the Holocaust are universal. Everywhere on the face of this planet, in the consciousness of every generation, we must educate and assimilate, deter and post warning signs regarding megalomaniacal regimes with murderous fanatical ideologies, secular and religious alike, which condemn human life. The people of Israel are grateful to and appreciate the United Nations, which rose above and adopted this mission during one of its finest hours, by unanimously setting the day of the liberation of Auschwitz as the International Day of Remembrance for the Holocaust and its lessons.
Several years ago, a delegation of IDF officers set off on a tour of the sites of destruction in Europe. During its visit to Auschwitz, the delegation conducted a short ceremony, during which a fly-past by our pilots was carried out. A message was sent by the fly-past to the participants of the ceremony, which read: “We, the pilots of the Israeli Air Force, in the skies over the camp of horrors, risen from the ashes of millions of victims, raise aloft their mute cry, salute their heroism and promise to serve as a defensive shield for the Jewish people and its land – Israel.”
The miracle of the resurrection of the State of Israel appeared there at that time clearer and more lucid than ever.
If only the dead could open their eyes for one moment and see, their gaze would be astounded and agitated in disbelief; if they could imagine in their souls, with their last agonized breath, this wondrous site perhaps it could have served as their comfort and their revenge. However, they all were murdered – children and elderly, men and women, infants and the old – without hope and without meaning, innocent of any guilt, pure of any sin, hellishly persecuted solely for being Jews, solely for being Jewish.
And the skies – those same clear skies in which the fly-past thundered – were different then. The skies were dark and silent; smoke arose constantly from the crematoria and the smell of charred corpses was carried on the wind. The machines of death worked ceaselessly; around them the world roiled with war; hundreds of thousands of planes bombed more important and less important targets across the continent. However, not one flight – not one! – was diverted to stop the destruction. Auschwitz, the train tracks which led to it, the trains themselves, the platforms – all ran smoothly and without interruption until the end. Like clockwork – the Nazi clockwork. And the skies remained empty. The sun rose and set as usual, the rain fell, the snow whitened everything, the murderers killed – and not one plane buzzed by nor disturbed the routine slaughter.
“Our children wept in the shadow of the gallows
The Earth’s anger we did not hear…” wrote the poet Natan Alterman at the time.
Madam Speaker, Distinguished guests,
The Jewish people will never again be homeless and helpless as it was during the Holocaust. However, our ears are attuned and we are more sensitive than any other people to the threats of destruction. We do not allow ourselves to be complacent to those voices calling for the destruction of the State of Israel; especially when behind those despicable voices stand a fanatic and murderous ideology, a despotic regime which supports terror that unrestrainedly conspires to regional hegemony, and which has a malevolent plan to develop weapons of mass destruction. From our perspective, from the perspective of the Jewish people, who has learned from the Holocaust, this is an intolerable situation.
The State of Israel does indeed know how to defend itself, but on behalf of that same universal lesson which motivated the world’s nations to determine this day, the liberation of Auschwitz, as the International Day of Remembrance for the Holocaust, we demand that the international community take action. We greatly respect and appreciate the governments and leaders which are taking a determined stand against the danger. We call on others, whose stand is influenced by calculations of personal interest, to abandon any foreign consideration and present a determined and united front, in order to remove the shadow which threatens peace in the region and in the world.
On this special day, here in the Israeli Knesset, we will extol the Holocaust survivors, who rebuilt their lives and their homes in the State of Israel. We will not neglect them. And even if previous Governments of Israel have sinned – unwittingly – towards them, we have now taken it upon ourselves to correct those distortions, and assist them and respect their age and their suffering. For their shame is our shame, and their dignity is ours.
On the day of the liberation of Auschwitz, there are among us the remnants of those who experienced the atrocities, in whose flesh, numbers are seared. Those who remain, and who are regrettably very few in number, deserve that the State of Israel carry them on its shoulders. This will be done. We will remember – and never forget that this sacred duty belongs to all of us.