Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev
With awe and reverence we are gathered here to dedicate the new Holocaust museum, here, on Har Hazikkaron, the Mount of Remembrance, in Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem.
Within a few years the few who survived the inferno, those who left behind in Europe their parents, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, and all those dear to them, will pass on. They left behind their spiritual world, their culture, the rhythm of their lives, and their worldly goods. They came here naked and bereft of all and built new homes in their ancient homeland.
For years we worked diligently to recover the shards of their stories and the fragments of their memories, their faded pictures, the little – too little – that the victims left behind. And these we exhibit in our new museum.
The museum that we are dedicating today is a monument to those who were murdered – attempting to preserve their names, faces and identities for future generations. This museum is the authentic, personal, cry of the generation of those who can tell the story. It is their Jewish story and ours, and it is the story of the rupture and the universal eclipse of an entire world in which the perpetrator committed murder, the neighbour silently stood idly by and only the very few chose to save their fellow human beings.
This museum is the story of the victim and of the survivor – the story of the anguish, of the suffering, of the loss, and of an entire life extinguished with no one left to tell its story.
We, the second generation, who have salvaged the story from them, and who have retrieved from deep in their cupboards and from the bottom of their modest cabinet drawers the letters, the artifacts, the spiritual treasures that so deeply express their identity, have generously taken upon ourselves the weighty historic responsibility to build out of these fragments of memory this new museum.
And I, Avner Shalev, the sabra born in Jerusalem, progeny of my grandparents, Aigi and Zisel, Shlomo and Zalman, who were murdered during the Shoah and whom I never had the opportunity to meet, took upon myself the mission that they bequeathed to me – “Zachor” - remember – and I have been privileged to realize that mission here, in the public arena. My grandfathers and grandmothers represent an entire generation that has been erased for all of eternity.
We know today that in the rupture in their lives something was torn out of the fabric of our lives as well. We are but a link in the chain of Jewish existence that the Holocaust threatened to cut off. This house looks upon us from the Holocaust, and we look back through it at the Holocaust, and the tree that was cut down shall not be uprooted. From the stump of that tree, grew its trunk and the strong branches from which together with the Holocaust survivors built the State of Israel.
I, Avner Shalev, grandfather to Ruth, Shira, Yonatan, Dan, Yael, Daniel, and Avigayil, promise today, through this house, to my friends, my brothers and sisters who survived the Holocaust, to my people and to the citizens of the world, that through this memorial flame we will pass on the Jewish understanding that to remember is a positive commandment and a moral imperative to mend the world and to choose life. In the words of the poet Haim Gouri: “To the burned ghetto we have here raised a monument, a monument of life that will never cease.”
I would like to express my gratitude to many, with whose support, talent, and hard work this museum has been completed:
To the Government of the State of Israel who has supported our endeavours;
To the Claims Conference that answered the sacred call of Holocaust memory;
To the many donors, our partners, with whose help we have succeeded in realizing our mission;
To the Yad Vashem family and all its devoted workers. For us, the museum that is being dedicated today is the culmination of years of work, and it will lead yesterday’s memory into tomorrow.
To all the artists and artisans who transformed the place, the testimonies, the exhibits into a language that proceeds from the heart and speaks to the heart and builds the bridge to future generations.
My thanks to all of you.
The wings of the museum structure that open to the Jerusalem scenery like hands reaching out in prayer symbolize our commitment to a future of life and hope, and of preserving the human spirit.
This commitment needs to be shared by all of us, especially you, leaders of world. Your presence here strengthens this commitment.
The responsibility upon us all is great, and the choice is ours. As it is written in Deuteronomy [30:19]: “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.”
Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev addresses the audience during the Inaugural Ceremony of the New Museum
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan
President Katsav,
Prime Minister Sharon,
Minister Livnat, [of Education]
Mr. Amrami, [Director-General, Yad Vashem]
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to thank the Government of Israel and Yad Vashem for inviting us to this ceremony.
The Holocaust occupies a unique place in the history of the United Nations.
The very name of the Organization was coined to describe the alliance fighting to end the Nazi regime.
In April 1945, just days after delegates gathered in San Francisco to draft our Charter, the death camp at Dachau was liberated.
Hitler’s death, the end of the war in Europe, the first newsreel footage of emaciated camp survivors – these were the daily dispatches that framed the work of the framers.
Worldwide revulsion at the genocide – at the systematic murder of six million Jews and millions of others -- was also a driving force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Our global mission of peace, freedom and human dignity was literally forged in fire – in fact the most awful fires humankind has ever seen.
As Aharon Appelfeld wrote recently, “Such a colossal crime can be committed only if you mobilize the darkest dark of the soul.”
Today, our most fundamental task is to remember loved ones lost, cities and cultures destroyed, to ensure that their fates are recorded and that they are never forgotten.
It is also to ensure that no such horror happens again anywhere.
But our work for remembrance is also a yearning for wisdom.
And it is an attempt to project forward, to future generations, a different vision of human existence.
The United Nations has a sacred responsibility to combat hatred and intolerance.
A United Nations that fails to be at the forefront of the fight against antiSemitism and other forms of racism denies its history and undermines its future.
That obligation binds us to the Jewish people, and to the State of Israel, which rose, like the United Nations itself, from the ashes of the Holocaust.
And it binds us to all people who have been, or may be, threatened with a similar fate.
The United Nations must remain eternally vigilant.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The number of Holocaust survivors who are still with us is dwindling fast.
Our children are growing up just as rapidly. They are beginning to ask their first questions about injustice. What will we tell them?
Will we say, “That’s just the way the world is”?
Or will we say instead, “We are striving to change things – to find a better way”?
Let this museum stand as testimony that we are striving for a better way.
Let Yad Vashem inspire us to keep striving, as long as the darkest dark stalks the face of the earth.
Thank you very much.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan delivers his address at the ceremony marking the inauguration of the New Museum
Prof. Elie Wiesel
Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, Mes Amis de France, Nitsolei Shoa Yekarim:
As you walk through the museum as so magnificently conceived by Moshe Safdie, you wander where is the place of rage in all that. How come that the Jewish People, when we discovered the magnitude of cruelty and the consequence of hatred, how come we were not possessed by extraordinary, impeccable RAGE! Rage of the killers – rage towards those who inspired the killers – rage towards the indifferent – those who knew and were silent. Where is RAGE?
So you look and you look and you are afraid to look – I am. I look at some pictures of Jews from Hungary and I am afraid to discover some that I have known.
You read and you read and you say to yourself: where did they have the strength to write – to use words – destined to whom? My good friends, all of us know more or less that there was a tragedy – and we also know that we must be honest about it – there are no words. Only those who were there know what it meant being there. And yet – we are duty bound to try and not to bury our memories into silence – we try. I know what people say – it is so easy. Those that were there won’t agree with that statement: the statement is: it was man’s inhumanity to man. NO! It was man’s inhumanity to Jews! Jews were not killed because they were human beings. In the eyes of the killers they were not human beings! They were Jews! It is because they were Jews that it was so easy for the killers to kill!
And you see the pictures – My G’d, you see the pictures! Jews were ordered to dig their own graves. Have we ever had that in history, that has always been filled with cruelty but not such cruelty? Have mothers ever been forced to give up their children in order to live? And few mothers chose that, no? Mothers went with their children with their babies – there are no words! At that time we had a feeling that history had entered into madness, and madness had its own logic, its own destiny, almost its own archeology. And within that madness it was perfectly plausible to kill children.
And so we go through the museum and we do not understand. All we know is that it happened. And now the question is: what does one do with memories. Any psychiatrist will tell you: if you suppress memories they will come back with fury. You must face them. Even if you cannot articulate them, we must face them. And memories are many and varied.
Memories of those who died with weapons in their hands – and those who died with prayers on their lips. And let no one say that some were heroes and others martyrs. In those times the heroes were martyrs and the martyrs were heroes. It was heroic for a friend to give his piece of bread to his friend; it was heroic to go around on shabat and wimply say to his or her friends: it is shabat today. It was heroic to have faith; it was heroic to be human.
And so we go through the museum and what should we do? Weep? No!
My good friends – we never try to tell the tale to make people weep. It is too easy. We did not want pity. If we decided to tell the tale - it is because we wanted the world to be a better world – just a better world and learn and remember.
There is a frightening character in all of Kafka’s stories. It is always the messenger who tried to deliver the message and is unable to do so. We feel sorry for the poor messenger – but there is something more tragic than that. When the messenger has delivered the message and nothing has changed.
You have heard tonight those who spoke here with elegance, with compassion and they spoke already about anti-Semitism and intolerance. Now? 60 years later? When the messenger has tried to deliver the message? Why should there be anti-Semitism? But there is! Why should there be suicide killers? But there are! Why should there be hatred? But there is! Fanaticism? Yes! It’s calmed? No! It is here!
The messenger has delivered the message. What is our role? We must become the messengers.
Messengers.
Prof. Elie Wiesel delivers his address at the ceremony marking the inauguration of the New Museum
