From the Desk of Avner Shalev – Yad Vashem, Jerusalem

May 23, 2017

Dear Friends,

A short while ago, I bid farewell to US President Donald Trump at the threshold of our Hall of Remembrance, following the President’s participation today in a memorial ceremony at Yad Vashem.

The President and Mrs. Trump were accompanied by Prime Minister and Mrs. Netanyahu, and a delegation of senior American officials.

President Trump’s decisive and memorable remarks as he emerged from the Hall of Remembrance expressed deep identification with the cause and need for Holocaust remembrance: “Only when we remember the families who were torn apart from everyone they loved, who suffered that terrible darkness and evil; who had endured the unbearable horror of the Holocaust, only then can we prevent this agony from ever repeating.”

At the conclusion of the ceremony, I presented the President with a symbolic memento of his visit to Yad Vashem: a replica of a Holocaust-era personal album that belonged to Ester Goldstein, a 16-year old Jewish girl from Berlin, who was murdered by the Nazis in 1942, in Latvia. I explained to President Trump that the gift is significant both as matchless testimony to the unique individual identity of one of the six million victims of the Holocaust, and as an indication of how Yad Vashem tirelessly gathers, preserves and makes accessible tens of millions of documents and tens of thousands of artifacts related to the Shoah.

For me, the importance of today’s ceremony at Yad Vashem, and the worldwide attention that it has gained, lie in their potential to focus public awareness on the vital Jewish and universal values and relevance of Holocaust remembrance, on the essential battle for human morality inspired by the legacy of the victims and the survivors, and on Yad Vashem’s centrality in that battle.

With your support and encouragement, we shall continue to utilize appropriate occasions – such as today’s Presidential visit – as opportunities to highlight and enhance our crucial efforts.

Yours,
Avner Shalev
Chairman
Yad Vashem Directorate