In a defiant speech coming from the place symbolising the suffering of Jews during World War II, Israel’s prime minister warned yesterday that the Jewish state will do everything to prevent another holocaust and to defend itself against any threat.
Benjamin Netanyahu spoke during the inauguration of a new pavilion at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz that is to educate visitors about the Holocaust. Auschwitz – with adjacent Birkenau – was the most notorious of a system of death camps that Nazi Germany built and operated in occupied Poland.
“From here, the place that attests to the desire to destroy us, I, the prime minister of Israel, the state of the Jewish people, say to all the nations of the world: the state of Israel will do whatever is necessary to prevent another holocaust,” Mr Netanyahu said, as he stood in front of the red-brick, former prisoner block that houses the new exhibition.
“We must not be complacent in the face of threats of annihilation. We must not bury our heads in the sand or allow others to do the work for us,” he said, not naming the threat but apparently referencing Iran and its nuclear programme.
Before the speech, he visited Block 27, which is now dedicated to presenting Auschwitz in the larger context of the war. More than 1.1 million of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust died in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
Among some 4.2 million names of Holocaust victims listed, page after page, on a 14-metre-long list called The Book of Names, Mr Netanyahu found the name of Yehudit Hun, the twin sister of his late father-in-law, killed in Bilgoraj, southeastern Poland.
“If there are Holocaust deniers, have them come to Block 27 and go over one name at a time,” Mr Netanyahu said in clear reference to Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who questions the extent of the massacre.
The exhibition was curated by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. It includes survivor testimonies and drawings by some of the 1.5 million child victims.
The Nazis carried out the Holocaust to a large extent in occupied Poland, because it had Europe’s largest Jewish population and it was at the heart of a railway network that allowed Jews to be easily transported there from elsewhere in Europe.
Many Israeli leaders are children of Holocaust survivors, and Israel has the world’s largest population of survivors.