Dani Dayan appointed chair of Yad Vashem

Dani Dayan, the former Israeli consul-general to New York, is appointed to serve as the next chairman of Yad Vashem.

The position has been left unfilled since Avner Shalev resigned from the role last June.

In a statement, Dayan thanks Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton and the Israeli government for appointing him to the job.

“Leading Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, is more than a position; it is a mission and one I take on with awe and reverence,” Dayan says.

“Yad Vashem is not just a commemorative endeavor. On our shoulders rests the responsibility to research and educate, to document and disseminate, to validate fact-based historical truths about the Holocaust and reject all forms of distortion, in order to safeguard the memory of the Shoah and to ensure that the Jewish people and humanity will forever continue to remember this event,” he adds.

Dayan ran for Knesset this year with Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope Party, but failed to make it into the Knesset when the party did not win enough seats.