"Your visit is another part in the chain of "Israel-Polish relations," said Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. "A chain in which the tragedy of the Holocaust whose wounds are still open and should not be ignored, stands out."
Duda thanked Rivlin for his invitation and for the warm relationship between the two nations, adding jocularly that "I have heard that all the mothers in Israel are 'Polish mothers', [in Hebrew 'Polish mother' is a pejorative for an obsessive, overbearing mother] and I send my warmest regards to all the Polish mothers in Israel.
"My visit to Israel makes me feel that I am in a place which I recognize even though I had never been here in the past. Similar sentiments are felt by Jews coming to Poland and standing on the ground where their fathers lived in Krakow, Lizhensk and Lublin. For me this a proof of the common memory of places and language.
The Polish president also mentioned that "the Jewish community in Poland is renovating and flourishing and this is a unique phenomenon in my eyes."