At the end of three busy days in Germany, the country's president, Yitzhak Herzog, signs off on his visit to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp alongside German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and district president Michael Kretschmer.
At the beginning of the visit, the president of the country and the president of Germany laid a wreath at the foot of the monument on the site.
After the laying of the wreaths, the presidents went to the Jewish memorial that was erected after the war by the survivors of the camp.
Herzog recited a "Kaddish" prayer in memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, in a similar manner to his father, the late 6th President Chaim Herzog, who arrived in Bergen-Belsen as part of his state visit to Germany in 1987, as the first Israeli president to visit it.
The presidential visit to the Bergen-Belsen camp,
On April 15, 1945, at the end of World War II, a group of British officers liberated the Bergen-Belsen prison camp from the Nazis.
The father of the President of the State of Israel, the sixth president of Israel, the late Chaim Herzog, then an officer in the British Army, participated in that liberation. The prayer "God is full of mercy" was said by Rabbi Yankel Langiel, who also participated in the memorial ceremony at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the state visit of The year 1987.
Participated in the liberation of the camp.
The late President Haim Herzog, photo: Nati Harnik
After that, the young people of the area, Germans and Jews, read excerpts from the diary of Anne Frank, who died in the camp in 1945. The two presidents gave speeches to the guests and united with the memory of the six million Jews, next to a memorial stone that was placed at the site during the visit of the late Chaim Herzog, on The background of the anthem "Hope" performed by survivors in 1945. The chilling singing was recorded by a reporter upon his arrival at the liberated camp.
President Yitzhak Herzog in the Bergen-Belsen camp,
"We swear in your memory that we will forever be faithful."
President Yitzhak Herzog next to the President of Germany in the Bergen-Belsen camp,
Herzog Sr. speaks at the camp memorial, photo: Nati Harnik
"Respectfully, Tamar Landau, from the city of Boyten, was a young girl, on the day she was deported with her family, right after Kristallnacht, and was taken to forced labor. The end of the war caught her here, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, freezing cold and dying of hunger; waiting Torah to be sent to the death march. Before coming here, I talked with Tamar, who built her life in Jerusalem. She came back and reminded me how, with the liberation of the camp, a military convoy entered here headed by an officer who stood on a wooden box and shouted in Yiddish: in front of hundreds of people, hundreds of human skeletons: Yeyden, yeyden, es leban noch yeyden," and in Hebrew: "Jews, there are more Jews alive." There are more Jews in the world! This Jewish officer, my father Haim Herzog, whose memory is blessed, was later the President of the State of Israel.
President Chaim Herzog in the Bergen-Belsen camp, 1987, photo: Nati Henrik
"Four decades later, my father returned here, as the sixth president of the Jewish, independent, strong, and democratic State of Israel. My father chose to open his visit here, at the place where I sign my visit, when he spoke to the victims of the Holocaust, saying: "In the name of the people of Israel , in the name of the State of Israel, I swear in your memory that we will forever be faithful to the decree you bequeathed to us: the decree of life." So said Father, and so I say today, as the president of the State of Israel - the state of the Jewish people; here, in this terrible place, we remember the decree that binds All of us: a decree of life, a decree of the eternity of Israel, and of the obligation to act for it in every generation.
"Friends of the President, your commitment to the memory of the past and its lessons, combined with your commitment to our common future, have made you one of the greatest friends of the State of Israel in the entire world. Time and again you prove to be a brave ally, and a true friend, of our country and the Jewish people. I thank you for What you have done and will do again."
The visit to the Bergen-Belsen camp,
During the visit to the concentration camp, Herzog met with the survivors Albrecht Weinberg - Albrecht lives in the town of Leer with his family, the same place he was forced to leave during World War II;
Yvonne Rice - post-war Greece, studied medicine, married and started a family;
Naomi Rinat who studied psychology in Holland and Israel and lives in Israel;
Menachem Z. Rosenzeft who was born in the displaced persons camp of Bergen-Belsen and is currently a senior member of the World Jewish Congress and a professor of law at the law faculty of Cornell and Columbia universities in the United States;
Yochaved Ritz-Olowsky, who was also born in a displaced persons camp in 1947, is the daughter of two Holocaust survivors from Auschwitz.
After her family immigrated to Israel, her father founded the organization "Sharit Haflita", and the Bergen-Belsen Survivors Committee in Israel.
Today Yochaved continues her father's legacy as president of the organization.
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