Arutz Sheva spoke with former Chief Rabbi of Israel Yisrael Meir Lau on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Rabbi Lau survived the Holocaust as a child and later became a symbol of miraculous survival in the face of the crimes committed by the Nazis. Asked what his message was for the occasion, he said that he wished to convey “how great the Jewish people is” in that “only two and a half years after the Holocaust, six death camps in Poland and the other concentration camps and ghettos all over Europe, we could establish the independent state, open the gates for aliyah for brothers and sisters who came from all over the world to build a home for the Jewish people.”
“And such a home like the state of Israel, with a lot of Torah, which never happened since the first Temple,” he said, adding, “The development of the Jewish state from 6 hundred thousand to 8 million in 70 years in spite of 7 wars, shows what Moses said to G-d: ‘Please, go with us, for we are a stiff-necked people.’ We are a nation with character and heroism, and we have to appreciate what we are and where we are.”
Rabbi Lau said that the rise of anti-Semitism in the world today makes us remember that “we can never forget the horrors of the Holocaust,” and that anti-Semitism must be fought with education about the Jewish people, its heritage, “and how we can fight anti-Semitism knowing that we are an eternal and immortal nation.”