Chairman of the Board of Governors, World Jewish Congress; President of the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany; Vice-Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council.
It is truly a pleasure to speak after you, Mr. Vice President of Norway, Jan Petersen, and I remember clearly when we went to Oslo the first time to introduce the struggle for Jewish memory and restitution in the 1990’s and almost fell through an open door and indeed we found how a nation found its own past and attempted to train its own people to re-educate its own people, to understand what happened – if only to a very small number of people – which made a great impression on the mass of Norwegians. The experience of Norway spread throughout Europe and for us the struggle for restitution was not merely a struggle to return to Jews that which was taken away from them financially, but was a struggle for education. Because those nations that understood that something was taken from the people when they were stripped of their physical belongings, before they were stripped of their lives, and that indeed the struggle to return to a person that what belongs to him is the struggle to return to that person his life; the bones that had been torn from what was left of the skeleton came after the skin that was torn, after the clothes that were taken, after the homes that were stolen, after the books that were burnt, after the money that was taken and only the understanding of the nations that came finally to the realization they, their indifference, their participation, their institutionalization of violence and theft as a precursor to killing and death was the beginning of a new era.
Chairman of the Board of Trustees, World Jewish Congress - Dr. Israel Singer
