President Shimon Peres will depart on Monday for an official four-day visit to Germany, during which he will address the Bundestag in Hebrew. The historic address will commemorate International Holocaust Day, marked around the world on January 27.
The date, designated to remember the Holocaust since 2005 by the UN and some 25 countries, is the anniversary of the Soviet army's liberation of Auschwitz in 1945.
Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel will appear on the same day before a special session of the Italian Chamber of Deputies in Rome.
Among the six million Jews that Peres will eulogize in the German Parliament will be his grandparents and uncle, who were burned alive inside their synagogue in Vishinev, in White Russia.
Peres will also hold a series of diplomatic meetings with German leaders, a press conference with Chancellor Merkel, and a memorial ceremony at Berlin Train Station’s Platform 17, from where Berlin’s Jews were taken to their deaths.
To be joined in Berlin by Holocaust survivors, Peres will be welcomed in a large official ceremony, including a German Army honor guard, with the participation of Chancellor Angela Merkel, the President of Germany’s Supreme Court, and other officials.