By Joel Lion

On Monday, April 12, the State of Israel stood for two minutes in silence remembering the victims of the Holocaust, paying tribute to the 6 million Jews, 1.5 million of them young children, killed by Nazi Germany on a systematic and industrial way just because they were a part of the Jewish people. No difference was made between Orthodox and secular Jew, between liberal and conservative, between poor and rich, between celebrities and blue collars, all were killed.

But the Germans were not alone in their diabolic work, collaborators from other European nations were an active part of the killings.

In 1941, my mother’s grandparents were arrested by the Hungarian police. At that time, Hungary was a free country.  However, my great-grandparents were killed in Kamianets-Podilsky by German SS assisted by Ukrainian and Hungarian Platoons.  My other great-grandfather was arrested by the French Police , in the free French State of Vichy.  He was then transferred to the French camp of Drancy and was then sent on the French railway on Convoy 51 to the death camp of Sobibór, where he was killed.

In both cases, my family was killed because the ideology and the power of the Nazis  that gave a carte blanche to all European anti-Semites.

I ask myself if the world has learned lessons from the Holocaust.

What if Iran reaches its goal and gets nuclear weapons? The civilized world as we know it would be in danger.  As in the first half of this century in Europe, the power and the ideology of the actual Iranian regime will give carte blanche to all the extremists of this world.

The warnings of Israel or the Jews shouldn’t resonate alone this time, every lover of freedom and democracy should shout loud against the Iranian regime and its nuclear ambitions.

That should be a lesson learned from the Holocaust.

Joel Lion is the Spokesperson and Consul for Media Affairs at the Consulate General of Israel in New York

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Marking 65 years to the liberation of Auschwitz Concentration camp, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, joined leaders worldwide who gathered at the death camp, to commemorate the memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and to mark the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

PM Netanyahu’s full speech has been translated from Hebrew:

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David Saranga, Consul for Media and Public Affairs at the Israeli Consulate in New York wrote an article to the Jerusalem Post about Holocaust Denial and dialogue.

From the jPost:

The Holocaust is undeniable. Unquestionable. Irrefutable. If the remains of the bodies aren’t enough to prove it, then one could visit a concentration camp, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem or the Holocaust Museum in Washington and see with his own eyes what it means to be deported, humiliated, tortured and slaughtered.

This is history, no matter how one tries to dissect it.

But this article isn’t about whether or not the Holocaust happened. It’s about people who don’t want their children to know about it. It’s about the people who skim over the Holocaust during history lessons. Not surprisingly, these are the same people who make violent threats against anyone in their community who dares to challenge these practices. And they are the same people with whom Israel is trying to negotiate peace. So ironic, so impossible, so tragic.

Read the full article at The Jerusalem Post Online.

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