The Holocaust “cries from the prayer shawls the hair, the shoes that we see with our own eyes, resonates as we step on the stones of the ghettos, [and] it floats like a ghost in the barracks of the camp, President Shimon Peres said at the beginning of Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day Sunday night.
“The noise of those murderous trains which have ceased stills rings in our ears, said the president in the presence of IDF officers, Knesset Members, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the Quartet’s Middle East envoy Tony Blair and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada, John Baird,
“The Holocaust will not sink into the dark hole of history. It is here with us, burning, real,” President Peres continued.
“Nothing can remove the greatest darkness that mankind has known The 74 years which have passed are more biography than history. Millions of names are still missing, of parents and children, of whole Jewish communities who were murdered….
The Jewish people are a small nation in number but large in spirit. That spirit cannot be burned in the ovens. From the ashes of the Holocaust rose spiritual redemption and political rebirth. We rose and we built a state of our own….
“The Holocaust is an orphan with no comfort and a moral responsibility without compromise.
“Not all the flames have been extinguished. Crises are once again exploited to form Nazi parties, ridiculous but dangerous. Sickening anti-Semitic cartoons are published allegedly in the name of press freedom.”