Sixty-five years after the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp, Israel’s leaders made it clear in their Holocaust Memorial Day speeches that the day still swells with significance in modern times.
Israeli’s President Shimon Peres traveled to Germany for the Jan. 27 anniversary to address the German Reichstag in what is being called a “groundbreaking occasion,” as it is the first time an Israeli president has gone to Germany to mark the official U.N. memorial day for the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany. His 30-minute speech in Hebrew was broadcast over radio and television.
Peres, 86, shared his own boyhood memories of the Holocaust from Wiszniewo, Poland (now Belarus), reportedly bringing tears to the German house. Speaking about the day his grandfather was deported, Peres said: “I remember his last words to me, instructing me: ‘My boy, always stay a Jew.’ The locomotive whistled and the train pulled away ... it was the last time that I saw him.”
The statesmen also brought his remarks very much to the present, raising strong parallels between World War II and the threats facing Israel today.
“The threats to annihilate a people and a nation are voiced in the shadow of weapons of mass-destruction, which are held by irresponsible hands, by irrational thinking, and in an untruthful language,” he said referring to Iran.
“This regime [Iran] is a danger to the entire world,” Peres said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, braved the cold attending a ceremony at the Auschwitz extermination camp, attended by a dwindling number of survivors with their grown children.
The tenor of Netanyahu’s address was to warn the world of what happens when “impending dangers” are not confronted in the early stages.
Netanyahu, giving a similar address the day prior at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance museum, spoke of the three lessons today’s world must draw from the evidence of the design and premeditation of mass murder housed at Yad Vashem.
The first is that “pure unadulterated evil” exits. The second is that “unopposed, evil expands and devours the innocent.” The third is that this evil today, “is again threatening the same people, the Jewish people, but we know that it only starts with the Jews and then it consumes the rest of mankind.”
David Matas, senior legal counsel to B’nai Brith Canada, said he understands why Netanyahu makes this point, because what happened to the Jews under Hitler was not just a Jewish problem. “It quickly became everybody’s problem,” said Matas.
“We got involved in World War II because we didn’t do enough to stop the Nazis earlier,” said Matas.
“It started off with the Nazi persecution of the Jews, but it didn’t end with the persecution of the Jews. It ended with World War II,” he said pointing out that World War II then spread from Europe to Asia, and in the end killed more non-Jews than Jews.
A recent report by the Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism (CFCA) found that 2009 was a record year for the number of recorded anti-Semitic incidents since World War II.
Israeli’s President Shimon Peres traveled to Germany for the Jan. 27 anniversary to address the German Reichstag in what is being called a “groundbreaking occasion,” as it is the first time an Israeli president has gone to Germany to mark the official U.N. memorial day for the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany. His 30-minute speech in Hebrew was broadcast over radio and television.
Peres, 86, shared his own boyhood memories of the Holocaust from Wiszniewo, Poland (now Belarus), reportedly bringing tears to the German house. Speaking about the day his grandfather was deported, Peres said: “I remember his last words to me, instructing me: ‘My boy, always stay a Jew.’ The locomotive whistled and the train pulled away ... it was the last time that I saw him.”
The statesmen also brought his remarks very much to the present, raising strong parallels between World War II and the threats facing Israel today.
“The threats to annihilate a people and a nation are voiced in the shadow of weapons of mass-destruction, which are held by irresponsible hands, by irrational thinking, and in an untruthful language,” he said referring to Iran.
“This regime [Iran] is a danger to the entire world,” Peres said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, braved the cold attending a ceremony at the Auschwitz extermination camp, attended by a dwindling number of survivors with their grown children.
The tenor of Netanyahu’s address was to warn the world of what happens when “impending dangers” are not confronted in the early stages.
Netanyahu, giving a similar address the day prior at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance museum, spoke of the three lessons today’s world must draw from the evidence of the design and premeditation of mass murder housed at Yad Vashem.
The first is that “pure unadulterated evil” exits. The second is that “unopposed, evil expands and devours the innocent.” The third is that this evil today, “is again threatening the same people, the Jewish people, but we know that it only starts with the Jews and then it consumes the rest of mankind.”
David Matas, senior legal counsel to B’nai Brith Canada, said he understands why Netanyahu makes this point, because what happened to the Jews under Hitler was not just a Jewish problem. “It quickly became everybody’s problem,” said Matas.
“We got involved in World War II because we didn’t do enough to stop the Nazis earlier,” said Matas.
“It started off with the Nazi persecution of the Jews, but it didn’t end with the persecution of the Jews. It ended with World War II,” he said pointing out that World War II then spread from Europe to Asia, and in the end killed more non-Jews than Jews.
A recent report by the Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism (CFCA) found that 2009 was a record year for the number of recorded anti-Semitic incidents since World War II.
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