Prime Minister Barak's Speech Concluding Holocaust Remembrance Day
May 2, 2000
Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak yesterday evening
(Tuesday) 2.5.2000 spoke at Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta'ot, concluding
Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day. Following is the text
of the speech:
The enlightened world celebrates VE Day once each year, on 8-9 May.
Here, at Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta'ot, where the key official ceremony
marking Holocaust Day is held, this victory is celebrated daily. From
this perspective, this kibbutz is the best proof of the great Jewish
victory over the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish people out of
memory and existence.
The founders of Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta'ot were all Holocaust
survivors, the remnants of those who rebelled in the Warsaw Ghetto,
partisans who fought the Nazis in the forests of Poland and Russia,
prisoners in the concentration camps and the fighters of the Vilna
Ghetto. The cornerstone ceremony of the kibbutz was held in April
1949 - deliberately - on the 6th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising.
An integral part of the new kibbutz was to establish - on the day it
was founded - a museum to document the Holocaust of European Jewry
and the battles of the soldiers. On that same day, the first
Holocaust Remembrance Day was held, a ceremony that has become a key
fixture on the Israeli calendar.
The living sprit of the founders who established Kibbutz Lohamei
Hageta'ot was Zvia Lubatkin, who participated in the two Warsaw
Ghetto uprisings. In Israel, Zvia married Yitzhak - Antek -
Zuckerman, a legendary figure in his own right, who initiated the
Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the Jewish Fighters Organization that
planned the revolt, and who lead the organization after the death of
Mordechai Aneilewicz.
From its outset, Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta'ot has striven to fulfill two
missions that together are its raison d'etre. On one hand to be a
farm where people live and love, marry and have children, build homes
and plant trees - a place that is built daily with its face tot he
future. And on the other hand, a farm whose many educational
activities seek to "to deepen awareness of the Holocaust and the
revolts by the Jewish people in Israel and the world, and to be a
monument to the Diaspora that was destroyed."
Antek was one of the founders and designers of the Yitzhak Katznelson
Beit Lohamei Hageta'ot. Zvia worked in the hen-house, the kitchens,
administration, serving several times as Kibbutz secretary. They are
both no longer with us, but they had children and their children had
children of their own, all of whom reside here, at Kibbutz Lohamei
Hageta'ot. They lead the completely ordinary lives of daily routine
and blessings of people on their own land. This normalcy of their and
their colleagues' lives and is the very essence of the victory of the
prisoners of the camps, the Holocaust survivors, the ghetto fighters,
the victory over the Nazi extermination machine that could not defeat
them.
The people of Israel live.
Yes, the people of Israeli live.
They won a great victory, but we must rest on the laurels of that
victory. It is a conditional victory - the condition is the continued
existence of the vow of Abraham Shlonsky:
"For my eyes that have seen the bereavement
And burdened with the cries of my bowed heart
I vow to remember all
To remember and not forget anything."
The war of the ghetto fighters was never intended to defeat Nazi
Germany. It may have been hopeless, but it was never pointless. It
was intended to prove - and indeed did prove to the Germans, and even
more so to the Jews themselves - that when the Jew has a weapon in
his hands, he knows how to fight for his life.
This is the lesson the ghetto fighters have taught us: Never again to
be caught defenseless, never again be weak, to be trampled upon,
dependant on the goodwill and mercy of others.
In recent years, instances of Holocaust denial have multiplied. But,
so too have the instances of revulsion against them. The unique
international conference held early this year in Stockholm, which I
was honored to attend, turned into a global demonstration condemning
the repellant phenomenon called Holocaust denial. The conference
reiterated the fundamental lesson of Hitler's Germany: The lesson is
that enlightened society, society that respects human dignity in and
of itself including the stranger and those who are different, is not
something to be taken for granted, but something to protect and
determinedly fight for.
The embarrassing case of Austria, where Jorg Haider's neo-nazi party
has been made a regular member of the government coalition - despite
the protests of the international community - proves how much this
lesson is still valid.
Too many were silent when the Nazis raised their heads for the first
time. The State of Israel will not let it happen again without an
appropriate response.
Precisely today, precisely here at Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta'ot I call
to the leaders of the enlightened world to uproot the tree of racism
wherever we see its sprouts; to cut down every deviant blade of
anti-Semitism before it grows to monstrous proportions; to fight -
together and with determination - against every appearance of
xenophobia and to exterminate this dangerous virus.
We will not let anything or anybody endanger the full and complete
moral victory of the ghetto fighters and Holocaust survivors, the
survivors of the extermination camps, who have decreed to us by their
exemplary lives the double mission: To guarantee the construction,
prosperity, security and peace of the State of Israel, the state of
the Jewish people - and to concurrently guarantee to deepen the
awareness of the Holocaust and disseminate its lessons.
Here in Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta'ot, we commit ourselves to fulfill
this mission - in both its parts - in full and for eternity.