67th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz

Remarks by Zvi Rav-Ner, Ambassador of Israel

67 years ago today, the Red Army, has entered the gates of this camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and has ended the most terrible chapter in the history of mankind. The few thousands of prisoners who were liberated here, went through the most horrific experience that human beings ever went through.

They were the few who survived this factory of death, where almost a million and a half of people, men, women, old and young, children and babies were killed, tortured and gassed to death.

Ninety percent of the victims here were Jewish, part of the devilish plan and unprecedented attempt to erase a whole nation, the Jewish nation, just every Jew, in any place in the world. Fortunately, the Nazis have been defeated by the Allies and lost the war. They lost and we, survivors and children of the survivors , as well as liberators and their children, we are here.

The Nazi plan to destroy the Jewish people failed. A Jewish state was born and it serves as a home and shelter for millions of Jews, and who knows if this state had been in existence then, maybe, all this would have not happened.

It is unbelievable, especially while standing here, that there are still those who claim that all of this has never happened. Some of those Holocaust deniers are even leaders of countries, who have no shame in doing so.

Let's remember here today the victims, the survivors, the righteous among the nations who risked their own lives to save their fellow men, the fighters of the uprisings in the ghettoes and in other camps, the members of the undergrounds and certainly here today the brave soldiers who fought the Nazi beast, won the war and liberated this terrible place 67 years ago.

We shall always remember, we shall never forget and we shall always say "Never again, never again!"