60th anniversary of liberating KL Auschwitz-Birkenau, 27th January 2005
Address at the state ceremony by the President of Israel

Moshe Katsav,

I have come today to Birkenau to commemorate the millions who were murdered here and throughout Europe and to give honor to the victims and the survivors of the Shoah.

I wish to thank the President of Poland, Mr. Aleksander Kwasniewski, for his invitation to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

I wish to thank the Allies - the Red Army which liberated Auschwitz, the United States of America which sent armies to Europe to liberate its peoples, to Great Britain, whose courage served as an example of heroic determination, to the undergrounds in occupied Europe and to the one and a half million Jewish fighters who fought the Nazi menace.

Excellencies, Heads of State,

The mind of man fails to grasp the horror which took place inside these fences.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is the most horrendous crime scene in the history of humanity. Here in Birkenau, the largest graveyard of the Jewish people, we are witness to the gas chambers and the crematoria.

We see the barracks, the fences, the guard towers, the final station of the railway tracks which brought the condemned, from the far corners of Europe to these burning ovens. It seems as if we can still hear the dead crying out.

Thousands of people, trembling from terror, pouring out from the train wagons by a satanic plan of modern technology.

Day and night and with unfailing precision, the Germans conducted a genocide industry, a killing factory for the murder of our people in Europe.

It happened in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the capital of the death empire. It happened in Maidenek, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, Belzec and many other sites of mass murder.

When I step on the earth of the death camps, awe and trembling seize me, lest I tread on the ashes of the victims in Europe's soil. I fear lest the water running in Europe's rivers carries in it the blood of the Shoah dead.

Here, in the heart of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a scream seeks to burst from depth of our soul, and yet there is a spark of pride. The Jewish people have risen from the death camp ashes, as a brand snatched from the burning fire. We have returned to our homeland.

Three hours flight from here, we have re-established our homeland, but not in time to shelter those who were murdered here. We are a determined and proud nation which looks forward with great hope. Our strong ties with the nations whose leaders stand here with us, are a symbol of solace and a foundation of our security.

The Jewish people survived the destruction, suffering, exile, expulsions and the greatest tragedy – the Shoah. Despite it all, we have returned to our homeland and built a modern, developed, democratic state, which has ingathered the Jewish people from the four corners of the earth. In all of human history, there has been no similar event.

You, my brothers and sisters, martyrs of the Shoah who were not able join the State of Israel, you are the lost citizens of our homeland. World leaders have come to this place which was your hell, in order to remember you.

Excellencies, Kings, Queens, Presidents, Leaders of European states - in Auschwitz-Birkenau more than one million Jews were slaughtered, all of them sons and daughters of your lands, citizens of your countries.

We know that Europe was a land occupied by the German-Nazi regime. But we also remember that in European countries there was rabid anti-Semitism based on racism and hate, which left the Jews with no escape and without hope.

In Europe, in the heart of civilization, a nation rose up against another nation, to annihilate it and wipe it off the face of the earth. The destruction was the work of a people who produced renowned scientists and musicians.

A multitude of nations knew of the murder, but were indifferent. The world knew about the destruction of the European Jewry, but remained silent.

Opposition and hesitation of the Allies to bomb the death camps and to destroy the railways carrying the Jews to them, claimed more victims from our people, and this too remains a mark on the forehead of humanity.

Sixty years later, we face a reemergence of anti-Semitism in Europe. Is it possible that the deterrent power of the Shoah weakened? The answer is in the hands of Europe's leaders, it is in the hands of the educators and the historians. It is in our hands.

On this day, on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau, we feel closer than ever to the victims and the survivors. On this day we draw closer to our human heritage, to mankind's morality, to the Divine command.

Beyond all difference of opinion, we are united in our memory of the horror and we share the moral lesson:

We, the Jewish people are bound by history to commemorate the Shoah and to light with an eternal flame. This is demanded of us by our brothers and sisters from their graves, from the killing pits, from the gas chambers and the trains.

Humanity must pass on the knowledge and lessons of the Holocaust from one generation to another.

The victory over Nazism is the victory of humanity's values. It is the victory of morality and faith in mankind.

World leaders must know that dangerous doctrines can again emerge in the world, false doctrines which are based on ignorance, brainwashing, incitement, hatred, blindness, deceit and falsification, on coercion and on base instinct, on totalitarianism, on the exploitation of democracy to achieve dictatorship, on terrorism and bloodshed, on crematoria and fire, on murderous fanaticism.
The world leadership is responsible for the fate of humanity. We ought not place our hope in mankind's resilience.

Human progress and technology do not ensure the prevention of totalitarianism and may even be used by tyranny to achieve its goals.

We have seen that thinkers and philosophers, great musicians and composers, scientists and doctors may place themselves at the disposal of despotic rulers and become partners to ruin and bloodshed. This is what happened in the Shoah.

I wish to honor the exceptional persons, members of the Polish people and other nations, Righteous Among the Nations, who felt the pain of the persecuted, who provided shelter and thereby risked their lives.

We praise the survivors - for returning to life, for daring again to feel that you belong to the world, for finding the inner strength to again raise families, for again believing in man.
May the memory of the victims be blessed.