Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar participated on Wednesday at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony dedicated to the memory of foreign diplomats who helped save Jews during the Holocaust.
The ceremony took place next to the wall honoring the Righteous Among the Nations diplomats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem. The names of 49 diplomats who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust are commemorated on the wall.
Over 80 ambassadors and heads of foreign missions attended the ceremony, including Swiss Ambassador to Israel Simon Geissbühler, who delivered remarks in memory of Carl Lutz, a Swiss diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.
Below is the full text of Sa’ar’s address:
Distinguished ambassadors, ladies and gentlemen,
The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said: “The Holocaust was more than a Jewish tragedy. It was a human tragedy. Auschwitz did more than claim the lives of its victims. Something of the image of God that is humanity died there too.”
The moral and historic lesson that the human race needs to learn from the Holocaust—must run through the understanding of Europe’s total moral collapse during those terrible years.
The Nazi regime was indeed insane. “They asked us,” said the head of the SS Heinrich Himmler in October 1943, to his men, “What about the women and children?”:
“I did not consider myself justified in exterminating the men—in other words, killing them or having them killed—and then allowing their children to grow up to wreak vengeance on our children and grandchildren. The difficult decision had to be taken to make these people disappear from the face of the earth.”
But the Nazi regime could not have carried out its plot without widespread cooperation through the continent. With the help of nations and the help of elites.
Few showed a humane attitude. Many collaborated. Even more stood on the side. And in that time—the gates of countries worldwide were closed off to those seeking to escape Europe to any possible destination.
Step by step, Hitler advanced unhindered. In his hate propaganda against the Jews, discrimination, marking the Jews, concentrating [them] territorially and finally, the elimination.
He constantly tested the limits of how far preparations for carrying out his evil plans could go. Yet nowhere did he encounter a real obstacle or barrier.
The easiness in which he was able to carry out his plans is astonishing. Public figures, scholars and religious leaders, academics and scientists—the entire European civilization turned its back on its values and the most basic human code of conduct.
In his monumental book, “The Years of Extermination,” professor Saul Friedländer describes an episode in which nine elderly Jews that had survived the massacre at Babi Yar were sitting near the old synagogue.
No one dared approach them to offer food or water. The punishment for doing so could have been immediate execution.
One by one, the Jews perished and died, until only two remained.
“A passerby suggested to the German guard to shoot both of them rather than let them die of hunger. The guard hesitated for a moment and then shot them.”
In that dark period, tens of thousands of the Righteous Among the Nations stood out as a model of humanity, among hundreds of millions. Their devotion and courage were hidden at the time.
Not long ago, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama told me the story of one of them, which deeply moved me: An elderly Muslim man who hid Jewish children in his home in the Shkodër region of northern Albania. Informants brought the Nazis to his doorstep: “We know you have two Jewish children inside.” He handed over his own children instead of the Jewish ones.
They ended their lives as Jews in Bergen-Belsen, under the names of the Jewish children who remained in hiding. Many Albanians risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews.
At the end of the war, there were more Jews in Albania than before it started. We will never forget this.
Between the Righteous Among the Nations were also diplomats who deserve to be mentioned on this occasion.
Ángel Sanz Briz
A Spanish diplomat (together with an Italian named Giorgio Perlasca) saved many Jews by using the authority of the Spanish embassy in Budapest. Among other ways—by using the Spanish law from 1924 granting citizenship to descendants of the Jews expelled from Spain.
Aristides de Sousa Mendes
The Portuguese Consul in Bordeaux, France, who issued ten thousand visas of his country to Jews. This was in violation of his government’s orders, and it saved them.
Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz
A German diplomat who served in Denmark. He enabled the rescue of most of Danish Jewry by leaking information about their planned deportation to the Danish underground. He secretly secured the Swedish government’s agreement to receive them.
These three names are on the wall here.
The Holocaust, with its uniqueness in scope and brutality, was the cruelest peak of the persecution and murders that our nation underwent through two thousand years of exile from our land.
The Jewish people is one of the most ancient nations in history. It should have been one of the largest nations on earth, if only we had the means to protect ourselves over many generations.
Also before the Holocaust, our people stood countless times, in many countries, helpless and defenseless in the face of persecution, murders and pogroms of different scales. In this sense, the Holocaust was also part of a historical sequence.
It was the peak of a historical drama of a defenseless nation. It was due to its lack of sovereignty, disconnected from its homeland, and lacking a protective force.
Millions of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, simply for being Jewish, cried out for help. But no one came to save them.
We are determined to preserve the Jewish state in our historic homeland forever. To maintain its protective force—the Israel Defense Forces. And to preserve the capabilities that, so tragically and desperately, our people lacked in the 1940s.
We know, and the whole world knows (even if it does not draw the necessary conclusions), that many around us today seek our elimination.
Not to harm us.
To eliminate us.
And it is not that they are only dreaming of it.
They are planning it. They are taking action to execute it.
But we have sworn—Never again!
This oath will not be broken.
We will remember our murdered brothers and sisters.
We will pass on the memory and its lessons to our sons and daughters.
We will uphold our vow: Never again!