President Reuven Rivlin held a working meeting at his residence in Jerusalem on Sunday with Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern who was making his first visit to Israel. Later the Chancellor was due to visit Yad Vashem, and then participate in the Yom HaShoah commemorations, Israel’s national Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day.
During the course of the meeting, Chancellor Kern recounted that his grandmother had worked in the home of a Jewish couple in Vienna who were forced into hiding when the Nazis arrived in Austria. He told how his mother as a child, would take food to the couple each day until one day she arrived to find the Gestapo there who chased her away. He explained the Jewish couple were never seen again. He noted his mother would often tell him about this and stressed, “These days, we have to be aware the direct line of remembrance is breaking, the witnesses of that dark period are passing away.”