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, for our own sake, and for the sake of future generations. Today's circumstances do not have the power to detract in any way from the importance of this sacred day, Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day. Even during this difficult time, as we combat a global pandemic, even in the midst of the current dread, we listen and make space within ourselves for remembering the past, the victims, and for thinking about you, the survivors, who survived humanity's darkest hour: the Holocaust, perpetrated by man against his fellow man.
Exactly seventy-five years have passed since the gates of hell were opened. In the spring of 1945, a few months after the furnaces of Auschwitz were extinguished, the sun dawned over Bergen-Belsen and the other camps. For six million of our brethren, it was too late. When the liberators entered the camps, they faced hell incarnate. Corpses strewn all around, with shadows of men walking alongside them. Muselmänner, the living dead, starved, parched, exhausted and sick. Their families had been murdered and cremated, massacred, or vanished without a trace. They had lost everything, even the ability to shed tears. The late Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize Laureate Prof. Elie Wiesel described it thus:
"Nobody cried in the camp. It was as though you were afraid that if you started, you wouldn't be able to stop. For us, freedom would mean the ability to cry again."
Citizens of Israel, it was the human spirit that vanquished the Holocaust. The monstrous Nazis crushed our bodies, but not our spirit. Through the paths of tears, in the depths of hell, in a disintegrating world stripped of cohesion with death stalking them daily, our brothers and sisters risked their lives in order to save those weaker than themselves. Not one Jew saved from the inferno, not one survivor of the Holocaust did not have a helping hand from another Jew, another human being. As they were being hunted, while having nothing themselves, Jews showed courage, determination and humanity, and they saved lives. Time after time, they proved that man could be humane to his fellow man. They proved that even at one's depths of despair, it is possible, and indeed necessary, to choose to be human. To embrace the most fundamental Jewish value of the sanctity of life, of mutual responsibility. They knew that if they were not committed to the basic values of the Jewish people – a common obligation to one another, solidarity, and helping those in need – their human spirit would be lost even before it was wiped out. And thus, they were like angels in the depths of hell.
This past January, leaders from all over the world gathered here, in Jerusalem, to give expression to our joint obligation to pass on the historical facts and meanings of the Holocaust to future generations. We acknowledged the simple truth that all the world's leaders and all the world's citizens need to stand united in the battle against racism, antisemitism and fascism, and in defense of democracy and democratic values.
The current pandemic occupying the entire world, the war against an non-human, invisible and indiscriminate foe, only emphasizes our common obligation to human solidarity, to mutual responsibility and to the uncompromising battle against antisemitism and hatred, which also spread like an infectious disease from one to another. My brothers and sisters, Holocaust survivors, heroes of the "Tekuma" (rebirth): The life of memory is longer than the lives of its owners. We remember. We are committed to remembering. We promise to bear the torch of memory, with you and for you. We are not parting ways. May the memory of our brothers and sisters be blessed for eternity.
