Speaker of the Knesset Yuli Edelstein hosted this afternoon a group of senior reporters from Germany, guests of the Yad Vashem Holocaust history museum who took part in events for Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes Remembrance Day.
The German reporters asked Edelstein about Israel’s approach to Germany in light of its role in the Holocaust. “Is it possible to forget? To put the past behind us? Don’t be polite,” asked one of the reporters.
Edelstein responded, “We will not forget. Neither do we have the right to forget. My parents were Holocaust survivors, and like many survivors they chose to remain silent. They didn’t talk about it or relate what they had been through. Maybe they sometimes even diminished the horror of the Holocaust.”
“I, too, for many years would not buy products from Germany. I wouldn’t visit Germany. Until my colleague, President of the Bundestag Professor Lammert, convinced me to come and I visited Berlin, for the first time, as Speaker of the Knesset, an official visit marking 50 years of relations between Germany and Israel,” Edelstein said.
He added, “The Holocaust is not a private tragedy of an individual. It’s a national matter. We will not forget and we cannot forget the past. But we struggle with it and engage in relations with Germany, with an eye to the future.”
The German reporters asked Edelstein his opinion regarding the policy Germany should employ with respect to the situation in Syria.
“The world cannot continue with a policy of ignoring [what’s happening in Syria],” he said. “What we’re seeing now in Syria has already been going on for several generations, since the days of Assad the father. Involvement does not necessarily involve stationing troops on the ground. But the free world’s policy of not expressing an opinion, the policy of trying to be ‘politically correct,’ allows the continued massacre of civilians in Syria.”