Address by President of the State of Israel

At this moment, a moment of majesty, mercy, and truth, we can truly hear the heartbeats of an entire nation, standing before their “Days of Awe”: the week that begins tonight and will end with the conclusion of the State of Israel’s 75th Independence Day. But this year is no ordinary year. And this memorial day is like no other. This year, feelings are rough and shoulders are hunched, as if to attest to the weight of the discord bearing down on us. I appeal to you, citizens of Israel, with a simple prayer: let us leave these sacred days, which begin tonight and end on Independence...

Elizabeta Guttmann, born in Hungary, was a young girl when the Second World War broke out. In 1943, Elizabeta, together with her sisters and parents, was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her parents and three little sisters were killed in the camp. Elizabeta clung on to her life and survived. At the end of the war, she returned to her childhood village and married Sandor ז"ל, who had also lost his family. For 20 years, they dreamed of immigrating to Israel but were denied time after time. Only in 1965 were they able to realize their dream and make aliyah. Together, they made a home and raised...

My brothers and sisters, Holocaust survivors, members of the second and third generations, families, citizens of Israel all. In the last few weeks, it feels as though the world has stopped turning. Our lives are now dictated by the battle against COVID-19 – from one news bulletin to the next, from one set of directives to the next. As such, regrettably, we do not meet tonight in Warsaw Ghetto Square at Yad Vashem, as we do every year. But we cannot let the threats of the present cloud the memory of the past. We are committed to remembering! We remember! We will prevail and we will remember,...

Dear brothers and sisters, survivors of the Holocaust. The first evening of Hanukkah 5704, 1943, in the prisoner’s hut in Bergen-Belsen, the Bluzhover Rebbe, Rabbi Israel Spira, recited the blessing over the lighting of the Hanukkah candles. His voice reverberated through the hut. He recited the first blessing, and the second, He then continued to the third blessing, his large audience of Jews joining him as he says: “Blessed be He, O Lord, who has kept us alive, and preserved us and enabled us to reach this moment”. I stand here on this evening of awe, in the rebuilt Jerusalem,...

Brothers and sisters, survivors of the Holocaust. On the night of the Passover Seder, 1944, in barrack 18 of Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp, a group of Jewish prisoners gathered, determined not to eat Chametz (leavened bread). Rabbi Aharon Bernard (Yisachar) Davids, the rabbi of Rotterdam and a leader in the religious Zionist movement, who decided not to escape with his family but rather was sent with his community to Bergen Belsen, explained to them that it was their obligation to do what was necessary to stay alive. In order to convince them, he picked up a piece of bread, and before eating...

"O' that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night, for the slain of the daughter of my people."We stand here tonight, in painful silence at Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day.  Exactly seventy years since April 15th 1945, a Sunday afternoon.  The day when the first British soldiers crossed the gates of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.  The joy of liberation was replaced by horror.  The horror that was revealed before their eyes was inconceivable.   In...

Dear Holocaust survivors,
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Speaker of the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein,
President of the Supreme Court, Justice Asher Grunis,
Chief Rabbi's, Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Rabbi Yona Metzger
Our dear friend Prime Minister Tony Blair,
Our dear friend the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada, John Baird, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Chairman of the Directorate of Yad Vashem, Avner Shalev,
Righteous Among the Nations, Honored guests,The Holocaust will not sink into the dark hole of history. It is here with us, burning,...

On my way here, the glowing lights of Jerusalem were suddenly replaced by the sparks of fire which once consumed my people. This is us. This is our people, a people of illumination, an orphan people. This is us. Holocaust survivors, builders of resurgence, my brothers and sisters, tonight our tearing eyes turn to those who are not here with us, and our wide opened eyes gaze upon the yet to come.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Speaker of the Knesset Reuven Rivlin,
President of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch
The Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Yona Metzger, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev, My brethren, Holocaust survivors,
Cherished Righteous Among the Nations, Ladies and gentlemen,This evening, we are not alone.  Six million of our people live on in our hearts. We are their eyes that remember. We are their voice that cries out.The dreadful scenes flow from their dead eyes to our open ones.  And those scenes will be remembered exactly...

Prime Minister, Speaker of the Knesset, President of the Supreme Court, Chief Rabbis, Government Ministers, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, Members of the Knesset, members of the Diplomatic Corps, Holocaust survivors, Righteous Among the Nations, ladies and gentlemen:My brothers and sisters in Israel and the Diaspora, the days are growing longer. It’s the end of the month of Nissan, and evening is falling in Israel. On the houses in Mahane Yehuda, in Kiryat Yovel, Kiryat Moshe, Talpiot, Ramot and Gilo. Evening is descending on the skyscrapers of...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Speaker of the Knesset Reuven Rivlin,
President of the Supreme Court, Judge Dorit Beinish,
The Chief Rabbis, Rabbi Shlomo Moshe Amar and Rabbi Yona Metzger, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau,
Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, Mr. Avner Shalev, Holocaust survivors,
Righteous Among the Nations, Distinguished guests,Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators, simply because they were Jewish.  1.5 million children were annihilated just because they belonged to the Jewish people.   They...

63 years have passed since the end of the most destructive, bloody war mankind has ever known – World War II.Victory over Nazi Germany restored the values of the human race, and saved Europe from sinking into an age of darkness and destruction.

Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister of Poland, Righteous Among the Nations, among them Ms. Andrée Geulen, who saved 300 Jewish children during the Holocaust, and came specially from Belgium to be with us, Holocaust survivors, honored guests, citizens of Israel.“Even if they speak for a thousand years, even if they relate for a thousand years, They will never finish telling the story of Treblinka.
The human language has not invented the words,
That can tell the story of Treblinka.” (Author Yehudit Hendel)There are simply no words that can explain it.  There is simply no...

The horrifying plan known as “The Final Solution” brought the Jewish people down into the abyss, but it rose from the ashes, bleeding and mortally wounded, and brought about the rebirth of Israel.

Millions of Jews the world over and many Righteous Among the Nations identify today with the memory of the Holocaust victims, and the suffering of Holocaust survivors. We will do this in every generation – the wounds of the Jewish people will never heal.60 years have passed since the slaughter of 6 million of our people, since the end of the harshest war the world has ever known.

1944 was a decisive year in World War II.  Defeat after defeat was inflicted on the German forces, but despite the fact that Allied victory was clearly in the offing, Nazi Germany was determined to complete the “Final Solution”, the murder of European Jewry. To this end, the Nazis redoubled their efforts to reach every last Jew before the war ended, annihilating community after community, individual after individual, in their homes, ghettos and hiding places.  This was also the fate of most of Hungarian Jewry, the last large Jewish community in Europe.  In just fifty-six...

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Speaker of the Knesset Ruby Rivlin MK, the Chief Rabbis, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev, dear survivors.60 years ago, on Seder night, the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto read the Haggadah to the sounds of gunfire, explosions, windows shattering, houses burning and people crying.  On Passover eve, Jewish fighters - the last prisoners of the Warsaw ghetto who remained - rose up and fought against the Nazis.  The revolt continued for about a month. It was the first uprising against the Nazi regime in occupied Europe. There were about  1000...

Today, 27th Nissan, the people of Israel bow their heads in memory of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. The memory of the Holocaust accompanies us throughout our lives, and is part of our collective and individual identity and heritage. The Holocaust is an open wound on the body of the Jewish people that has not healed, either psychologically or demographically.   The Jewish people lost a part of Jewish life in the inferno of the Holocaust, and left part of its soul in the extermination camps. Demographically speaking too, our numbers have not yet returned to the pre- war...