Polish Foreign Minister at Yad Vashem

15 June 2016

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, H.E. Mr. Witold Waszczykowski, visited Yad Vashem on Wednesday 15 June 2016. The Minister toured the Holocaust History Museum, participated in a memorial ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance, and visited the Children's Memorial.

At the end of his visit, Minister Waszczykowski remarked that some of the first reports of the Nazi atrocities were delivered by the Polish resistance. "We must remember these tragic events which, in a most brutal way, caused the end of a thousand years of Jewish life in Poland," he wrote in the Guest Book.

"Our cooperation with Yad Vashem, the guardian of the memory of the Holocaust, is extremely important to us. We are especially grateful for the honor that Yad Vashem affords the Righteous Among the Nations, amongst whom were a large number of Poles who risked their own lives and the lives of their families to help Jews. The enormity of the suffering of the Jewish nation documented in the historical collection in the Museum at Yad Vashem is a lesson for the future and the entire civilized world."

The Minister rekindled the Eternal Flame and laid a wreath on behalf of the Polish nation during a memorial ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance

The Foreign Minister stopped at the entrance to the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations to pay respects at the tree dedicated to Irena Sendler, a young Polish social worker who saved numerous Jewish children during WWII

In the Holocaust History Museum - remnants of Torah scrolls destroyed by the Nazi regime

Yad Vashem Guide Eva Lutkiewicz took the delegation to the symbolic reconstruction of Leszno Street in the Warsaw ghetto

In the Hall of Names, which currently houses the names of some 4.6 million Holocaust victims