Yisrael Katz
Yisrael KatzKobi Richter/TPS

A memorial ceremony for Holocaust Remembrance Day took place at Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak in central Israel on Wednesday evening.

Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz was the keynote speaker at the event and said, “Remember and never forget. This is what the six million Jewish brothers who perished in the Holocaust, in the planned and meticulous extermination campaign of the Nazi Germans and their aides, ordered us to do. On this day, we unite with the memory of our people, and sanctify the acts of heroism and acts of rebellion in those dark days. The Nazi regime took all possible measures to dismantle the frameworks of Jewish life and eliminate Jewish culture and spirit."

He spoke of his mother, a Holocaust survivor, who passed away recently. "Two months ago, my mother Malka passed away. I loved her very much. My heart still cries and mourns for her, for my father Meir who died 11 years ago and for a generation of Holocaust survivors who survived the terrible inferno, arrived in Israel and participated in the establishment and building of a magnificent state. My mother Malka was a strong woman who took the suffering and terror she experienced as a 15-year-old girl in the death camps and in the death march and turned them, together with my father Meir, into strength and determination. To build a flourishing family and farm, to strengthen and develop the State of Israel, and to strike roots in the homeland. Such was this generation."

"When I was first appointed minister, my father said: 'Today I defeated the Nazis, my son was appointed a minister in the government of Israel, in the State of Israel, the state of the Jewish people.' When I was appointed Foreign Minister, representing Israel vis-à-vis the countries of the world, my mother was happy and saw this as coming full circle. In all my public activities, I will bear the legacy of the generation of the Holocaust and the rebirth, and my uncompromising commitment to the development, strengthening and protection of the State of Israel,” added Katz.

"When I work in my current position as Transportation Minister to build roads, ports, airports and railways throughout Israel, I know that this is our real victory over what the Nazis tried to do. Every railroad track here is the answer to those railroad tracks that led helpless Jews to their deaths."