Chief of the General Staff addresses IDF General Staff at Yad Vashem in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Photo: IDF Spokesperson

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In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the IDF General Staff, under the leadership of the Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, held a special seminar on Monday, April 20th. The seminar took place at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum, which is located in Jerusalem.

In his speech to Yad Vashem employees and to the members of the IDF General Staff, Lt. Gen. Ashkenazi placed special emphasis on the memory of the ghetto fighters during the Holocaust, who resisted the Nazi regime even under the inhumane conditions that may have made it understandable for them to give up; “those who, thanks to their ambition, struggled to fight heroically and without compromise, to be mentioned in the history books, making the Jewish fighter not merely a forgotten image, but rather a reality that we can still see.” He continued: “The ideology that we’ve inherited from these fighters is at the very core of the IDF, even today.”

The Chief of the General Staff also wished to pay tribute to those survivors of the Holocaust who ultimately made their way to Israel and helped to establish the state, such as Jurek Plonski, who passed away only a few days ago at age 82 on Kibbutz Megiddo. “In my opinion, Jurek is the essence of the image of our people rising from the ashes; he was someone who immigrated to Israel with a youth movement, helped to establish the state, and built a family here. Not only was Jurek’s family murdered in the Holocaust, but his son, Eytan-Zvi Plonski, a Golani Brigade combat soldier, was killed during the Yom Kippur war,” explained the Chief of the General Staff.

He also spoke about the Flower for a Survivor project, in the framework of which IDF soldiers visit Holocaust survivors throughout Israel and award them with an honor certificate for their contribution to the State of Israel. Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi revealed that he would also participate in the project. “After this ceremony, I am going to meet Cornelia Yehudit Brenner. Yehudit survived the terrors of the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau and the cruel hands of Dr. Mengele. People like Yehudit, who experienced the worst of all and succeeded in finding the inner strength to come to Israel and build their homes here, represent a constant reminder of the magnitude of the responsibility that was imposed on us: to establish a sovereign, independent Jewish State, and with the aid of a state, to ensure that the Jewish people will never again be exposed to a horror such as the Holocaust.”

The Chief of the General Staff concluded his speech by further explaining this special responsibility. “It is our responsibility to continue to learn and speak about the Holocaust, to remember and not to forget… and we need to be aware that only a people who remembers and holds sacred the memories of its past, is able to give the present meaning and to build a future.