Herzog to Duda: Retelling of Holocaust story must include absolute evil of Nazis, their accomplices

“I stand here at these sacred moments, in a place where whole branches of our people were cut down, destroyed, tortured, and exterminated,” President Isaac Herzog says in his speech at Poland’s official ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

“In a place where Jewish hope and faith faced challenges the likes of which humanity had never known. And I cannot help but imagine the daughters and sons of my people, ‘beloved and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths never divided.’

“I imagine what they would have said, what they would have thought, if in those dark hours, in the stench of the sewers and suffocating cellars, staring down the barrels of guns and tanks, someone had whispered in their ears that eighty years later, we—the Presidents of Poland, Israel, and Germany—would be standing here and saluting their heroism and swearing an eternal oath together to their sacred memory, an oath with a singular core: never again.”

Herzog then turns to his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda.

“I thank you for your colossal efforts and your commitment to the task of remembrance and commemoration, including right here, in this place.”

“We must remember: there is nothing postmodern or relativistic about Holocaust remembrance. Absolute evil existed, in the form of the Nazis and their accomplices. And absolute good existed, in the form of the victims and the rebels, from every nation. And in passing this heritage down to posterity, it must reflect this indisputable axiom,” he says.

“The heroism of the resistance and the rebels and the imperative to remember that terrible chapter of history, when the Jewish People faced complete annihilation and destruction rained down upon Poland and many other countries, offer a platform for important dialogue between Poland and Israel and for the advancement of friendship between our peoples.”