Sunday, April 11, 2010

President Peres at Holocaust ceremony: 'In our hearts, Shoah; in our deeds, hope'

(Ynet).Throughout Israel heads are bowed as the nation marks Holocaust Remembrance Day and remembers the six million murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War. During a commemoration ceremony was held Sunday at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, President Shimon Peres recalled the lessons of the Shoah and said we must not be indifferent to Iranian threats.

"Israel will never forget two commands from the Holocaust," the president said. "The strong command to maintain an independent Jewish state, whose security is in its own hands, and with peace in its heart, and the command to take seriously threats of annihilation, Holocaust denial, and incitement to terror.

"It is our right and our obligation to demand from the nations of the world not to be indifferent as they were once, which resulted in millions of victims, including their own. The UN must hear the threats of annihilation coming from one state, which is a UN member, against another UN member state." Peres said that part of the Iranian nation itself is ashamed of the tyranny that controls it.



"The Arab states are aware that the anti-Israel incitement of Ahmadinejad is aimed at deflecting attention from his real aim, which is hegemonic control of the entire region," Peres warned. "The world war broke out with the satanic incitement of the Nazis, with the claim that the Germans are a superior race."

Peres said that the fire in which Jewish books were burned will continue to burn in our hearts as an impossible separation from "six million of our brothers, men, women, elderly. From a million and a half of our children. An incredible potential for live, for abilities, annihilated, a loss never to return." He added that the state must bear the cry of the Holocaust together with the din of its construction.

"Our eyes will remain open to danger, at all times, and our hands ceaselessly extended in peace. In our hearts the Shoah, and in our deeds, hope."