Israel began observing Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday evening with a state ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.
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During the event, President Isaac Herzog spoke first, noting that the "Jewish response to history is the commandment of remembrance: Remembering a deep and existential memory that provides history with meaning." He turned to Holocaust survivors who were in attendance and said, "Your memory is our memory and instilling it to younger generations is our task." He recalled the face he saw in a picture of a mother and her children in the Holocaust just before they are shot. "The picture is silent but the mother's screams can be heard," he said.
PM Naftali Bennett showed a "Page of Testimony" – a form that is normally filled out by relatives of survivors so that their experience would have a record. "I would like to read you from this form," Bennett said, noting the various fields. "Place of death: Auschwitz. Circumstances: Taken from her mother. Age at death: 30 minutes."
According to Bennett, "Hatred is easy to ignite, these are the darkest elements of a human soul, which sometimes erupt forward through blind hatred to the other," he said. He then added, "Every time we are tempted to believe that a new liberal and modern era has arrived where people no longer hate Jews, we get a reality check through a sober awakening. And what is the lesson? The lesson is that we have to be masters of our own fate and trust only ourselves, be strong and never apologize for our success."
Bennett then said that Israelis must put political divisions aside, noting that the infighting during the nation's period in exile should not be repeated. This was also an apparent reference to the recent death threats he has received. "Even during our darkest chapters in Jewish history, the Right and the Left did not muster the wisdom to join forces, each took on the Germans separately," he lamented, stressing that "we must never let this dangerous gene of sectarianism destroy Israel from within." He concluded: "Thank God, we have in Israel one army, one government, one Knesset, and one people – the People of Israel. When we are united, we are unmatched by any outside enemy."
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