In early September, Defense Minister Rabin visited Germany. He was the first Israeli defense minister to view military maneuvers carried out by the German army. He met with Chancellor Kohl and the German defense minister and heads of its army. In a visit to Dachau, he stated, "We have learned the lessons of the Holocaust. One of them was the establishment of our own strength. It is in the name of this strength that I am here today. I shall be a voice for the murdered" Text:
"We have not come here to eulogize, since no dictionary in the world contains the terms capable of describing the enormity of the horror. Nor did we come here to forgive, for there is no forgiveness.
In fact the face of these silent ovens, we stand here today to commemorate the thousands, the hundreds of thousands, the millions who went to their death helpless and defenseless - both here and in. other concentration and death camps; both Jews and other peoples.
As we stand here today, we cannot but feel that had history been more just with us earlier and had the State of Israel been established prior (to the Holocaust) and not as a phoenix rising from the ashes of the victims - that had the IDF existed at the time there would have been no Dachau, no ovens and no massacres. A third of the Jewish people would have been saved.
'O Brothers,' poet Natan Alterman once wrote, 'Only once in a thousand years our death may have a meaning.' And so it is. In contrast with that helplessness and despair and the journey to the gas chambers and the ovens - today, alongside our moral and cultural qualities, we also command military strength and the power of a great people, part of which was destroyed here, on this land.
We have learned the lessons of the Holocaust. One of them was the establishment of our own strength. It is in the name of this strength that I am here today. I shall be a voice for the murdered. We are here today to remind those inclined to forget - and there are many - that on this land was perpetrated the greatest crime in modern history. We, children of the Jewish people, sons and brothers to the victims burned in these ovens, shall overcome the horrendous catastrophe that afflicted us. It will take generations and centuries for the wounds to heal, leaving scars behind. Yet the guilt of those who perpetrated this crime and of those who knew -yet chose to remain silent and stand by without lifting a finger - this guilt shall live forever.
Some say that such a crime could never recur. Yet the saying that history never repeats itself is not always true. We are currently witnessing the emergence of a new wave of anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism. We also hear the dismissive and contemptuous reactions of those claiming that no such genocide will ever be repeated. It is worrisome to discover that the neo-Nazi rabble also includes third-generation (Germans) who seem to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. It is the duty of Germany - the state, the educators, the leaders - to nip this phenomenon in the bud. Together we shall see to it that what happened will never again recur.
The Bible says that the iniquities of the fathers should not be visited upon the sons, and the passage of time indeed saw the rise of a peace-seeking, democratic Germany which contributed to the strengthening of Israel in the last generation as a moral commitment to the Jewish people. We know to appreciate that.
On behalf of the State of Israel, of the defense establishment, of IDF soldiers and commanders, of fighters and civilians. I hereby wish to tell you that we won - although at a heavy cost of human life. I salute these silent stones hiding the ashes of those who never lived to see us fulfilling a generations-old dream. Let us part with them by citing the poem which states: "The day we longed for will arrive
When our tramping feet will thunder: We are here!"