Holocaust memorial day marks Warsaw ghetto uprising
JERUSALEM — Israel dedicated its annual memorial day for the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust to mark 70 years since the Warsaw ghetto uprising, a symbol of Jewish resistance against the Nazis in the Second World War that resonates deeply in Israel to this day.
At the opening ceremony at nightfall, President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both linked the desperate Jewish revolt of 1943 to the warrior mentality that enabled the establishment of Israel five years later.
“There was a never a rebellion like it. They were so few and their bravery remained as a model for so many,” Peres said at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, before hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their families, Israeli leaders, diplomats and others.
“A clear line exists between the resistance in the ghettos, in the camps and in the forests and the rebirth and bravery of the state of Israel. It is a line of dignity, of renewed independence, of mutual responsibility, of exalting God’s name,” he said, “as a ray of hope which was not extinguished even during terrible anguish. The ghetto fighters sought life even when circumstance screamed despair.”
Netanyahu called the uprising marked “a turning point in the fate of the Jewish people” where they transformed from helpless victims into fearless warriors.
Six million Jews were killed by German Nazis and their collaborators in the Holocaust, a third of world Jewry.
The 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising was the first large-scale rebellion against the Nazis in Europe and the single greatest act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Though guaranteed to fail, it became a symbol of struggle against impossible conditions, illustrated a refusal to give in to Nazi atrocities and inspired other acts of uprising and underground resistance by Jews and non-Jews alike.
While the world marks Internation- al Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, the date of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, Israel’s annual Holocaust memorial day coincides with the Hebrew date of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
Peres, an 89-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, also linked the Nazi genocide to Iran’s suspected drive to acquire nuclear bombs and its leaders’ repeated references to the destruction of Israel and its denial of the Holocaust.
“The civilized world must ask itself ... (how) it is still possible for the leadership, like that of Iran, to openly deny the Holocaust and threaten another Holocaust,” he said.
“Those who ignore the threat of a Holocaust against one nation must know that the threat of a Holocaust against one nation is a threat of a Holocaust against all nations.”
He spoke a day after the latest round of international talks aimed at halting Iran’s nuclear development program failed to reach an agreement.