In 1921, when he was only six months old, my father was smuggled in a sack of potatoes outside Ukraine.
My grandparents decided to flee from antisemitic pogroms in Ukraine and reach a relatively safe place - Poland.
They put their baby son in a sack, put a piece of cloth on his mouth, in order to muffle his voice, for they knew that crying could endanger immediate death, and prayed that they would survive the journey.
When they arrived in Poland, my grandmother was relieved when she saw that her son was alive.
Thanks to the power of their spirit, I am here today to tell the story and the story of European Jewry.
A few weeks ago, exactly 100 years later, I took over as chairman of Yad Vashem. I was given a huge responsibility and great honor after representing Israel for four years as Consul General in New York. Conferring diplomatic immunity.
But unlike many Jews from all over Europe, who had to hide their Jewish roots, I was moved by the words "State of Israel" that appear in English and Hebrew and by the Jewish symbol, the menorah, stamped on my passport and heart.
The difference between these two stories of border crossing is astounding, and is only one example of the change that the Jewish people have undergone today.
The world saw humanity plunge into the lowest place during the Holocaust - the systematic murder of two-thirds of European and North African Jewry.
I see myself among the lucky ones, born for security after my ancestors managed to escape before.
The Holocaust is part of the collective Jewish experience, and although Yad Vashem belongs forever to the Jewish people, it is a beacon of importance to all of humanity.
This is our duty
Today we mark 80 years of massacre in Babi Yar, Ukraine.
On September 30-29, 1941, on the eve of Yom Kippur, 33,771 Jews in Babi Yar were murdered by the Nazi Germans with the help of Ukrainian collaborators.
If the murder and cutting of the lives of tens of thousands of people for no injustice were not enough, over the years there were various forces, first the Nazi Germans and then the Soviet Union, who added sin to crime and tried to bury every trace of these atrocities in active oblivion. Today, 80 years later That horrible massacre, I am expected to pay my first official visit to Europe as chairman of Yad Vashem.
I will come to Babi Yar with the aim of opening an academic discussion on the subject and participating alongside the presidents of Israel, Ukraine, Germany and Albania, in memorial events organized by the Ukrainian government in cooperation with the Babi Yar Holocaust Remembrance Center, which is currently located there.
Represented the memory of the Babi Yar murderers and all six million Holocaust victims.
It is our Jewish,
human and moral
duty
to remember those who were destroyed in the Valley of Killing, and not to let them disappear.
It is important to make sure that wherever the memory of the Holocaust is commemorated and displayed, and all the more so where there were those who sought to erase his memory from the pages of history, historical truths will be protected forever.
Yad Vashem will not allow the memory of the Holocaust to sink and it is committed to being the keeper of the memory and its instigator for us today and for future generations of the Jewish people and of all humanity.