Lapid at Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony: We cannot trust anyone but ourselves

The Holocaust taught the Jewish people that we must survive at any cost, and be able to defend ourselves at any cost, opposition leader Yair Lapid told the listening audience at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Mordechai on Monday evening.

Lapid presented the audience with a scenario, asking: "What would I do if I were a Jew in Berlin in 1933, when Hitler came to power? Would I run away? Would I sell my house, my business, pull my kids out of school in the middle of the year?

"Or I would say to myself, 'It will pass, it's momentary madness, Hitler says all these things only because he is a politician who wants to be elected. It is true that he is antisemitic, but what Gentile is not antisemitic? We've been through worse. Better to wait, keep your head down, it will pass."

He also pondered what he would have done had he been a Jew in Germany, when the first trains headed east, toward certain death.

"Would I get on the train? Would I run my daughter north, into the woods, would I instruct my two sons to fight to the end? Would I drop my suitcase and start running or would I attack the guard in the black uniform?"

The former prime minister then addressed his own connection to the Holocaust, speaking about his grandfather, Bila Lampel, and asked the question: "Why didn't he fight when a German soldier came to take him from his home?"

This question, he said, has haunted the Jewish people since the very last train headed to Auschwitz. 

The absence of humanity 

However, now he answered it, saying that "The only possible answer is that because they were good people, they did not believe in the existence of evil.

"They knew, of course, that there were bad people in the world, but they did not believe in absolute evil, organized evil, without mercy or hesitation, a completely cold evil that looked at them and did not see them - not even for a moment - as part of the human race," he continued.

"As far as their killers were concerned, they weren't human, they weren't anyone's fathers, mothers, children. As far as their killers were concerned, they never got excited about a baby's birthday, never fell in love, never walked their old dog at two in the morning or laughed to tears at Charlie Chaplin's latest comedy.

"Because that's what it takes to murder another person in cold blood - to be convinced that he is not a person."

Lapid then turned his attention to the present day and to the memory of the Holocaust.

"The Holocaust presented Israel with a double challenge," he said. "On the one hand, it taught us that we must survive at any cost, and be able to defend ourselves at any cost. Trains with Jews will no longer leave platforms. The security of the State of Israel and the security of its residents should always be in our hands alone.

"We have friends - not only the United States but also New Germany, the other Germany, has proven its brave friendship to Israel time and time again - but we must not and we cannot trust anyone but ourselves."

"On the other hand, the Holocaust taught us that no matter what the circumstances are, we should remain moral people. Human morality is not tested when everything is fine or in front of the television. It is tested in the ability to see the suffering of the other even if you have every reason to see only your side.

The Holocaust cannot and should not be compared to any other event in history," he continued. "It was, in the words of writer K. Chetnik, an Auschwitz survivor, 'another planet.' It is forbidden to compare, but it is our duty to always remember what we learned from it.

Israel's moral challenge

However, he said, Israel's moral test is not conducted on another planet, but rather it is conducted in Gaza by Hamas, in Lebanon by Hezbollah and in Iran by the IRGC.

"Anyone who has control over us should ask themselves only one question," said the leader of the opposition. "What would you do if someone came to your child's kindergarten with a gun and started shooting everywhere?

Israel's moral test, said Lapid, is to, despite the circumstances, "distinguish between enemies and innocents. To kill our enemies without hesitation, but not to burn houses and not wipe out villages because Jews do not commit pogroms."

"The way to deal with evil is not to become like it. There is a difference between us and them, there should be a difference between us and them. Not because we don't understand evil, but because we understand it better than any other nation in history.

"This day, Holocaust Remembrance Day, is the day when we remember that we must do everything to prevent suffering and the death of innocents, it is also the day when we say to the world: we will not get on the train again. We will protect ourselves from evil."