President Herzog on Holocaust Memorial Day
President Herzog on Holocaust Memorial DayAmos Ben Gershom/GPO

President Isaac Herzog addressed the March of the Living today, Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day, in pre-recorded message broadcast to thousands of participants at the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The March of the Living is taking place in person again this year after a two-year hiatus owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.

President Isaac Herzog’s full speech:

Dear friends, dear brothers and sisters. Three years ago I was here. Leading the delegation of the Jewish Agency for Israel, I marched alongside Jews and non-Jews to remember the millions murdered in the Shoah.

We marched to salute the martyrs of the Holocaust and the uprisings. We marched to commemorate the Righteous Among the Nations, those who risked their lives for ours. We marched to honor the sheer heroism and perseverance of the precious survivors. We marched and we cried. And we cried, and we cried.

For the past two years we took a step back from the horror. We grieved in our homes and connected through screens and Zoom. But today, thank G-d, I speak to you from Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish, democratic State of Israel, when you are there in the camp, marching again.

We march to mourn, to remember, and to declare that the death marches of eighty years ago will never happen again and will never be forgotten.

The March of the Living is far more than a symbolic gesture. Commemorating the Holocaust is the duty of every person, of every nation across the globe. And it is our generation’s obligation!

To deeply, existentially remember is to act on behalf of those who cannot. It is to speak up against antisemitism, hatred, bigotry or racism. It is to align our moral compass, to insert compassion, tzedakah (charity), and chesed (loving-kindness), and to see the image of G-d in every human being.

The State of Israel, established in the wake of the Holocaust as a guarantee that the Jewish People always have a home, will act to ensure Jews will never again be refugees.

We will exert every effort to enable every single Jew in the world to live a proud, free, safe Jewish life. We will combat the trivialization of the truth and prevent alternative facts from replacing history.

We will not allow the world to forget the depths of human cruelty executed by the Nazis and their collaborators. And we will march again next year.

May we all succeed in passing the torch to the next generations.

And allow me, dear friends, to thank the President of Poland, Mr. Duda, and his government, as well as the leadership of the March of the Living organization from around the world and the leadership from Israel. Some of our friends, unfortunately, have left us this year, including the founder Avraham Hirschson. But their spirit goes on. May we all march together again and again, and continue to say: Am Yisrael Chai! (The People of Israel Lives.) Thank you.