Following is his speech:
"Dear Excellency Chancellor Karl Nehammer, Minister Alexander Schallenberg, Minister Gerhard Karner, Governor Thomas Shtelzer, President Oskar Deutsch, Dear Director Dr. Barbara Glück, Ladies and gentlemen, Most people don’t know the exact point at which they transitioned from child to adult. But my father knew. He became an adult at age 12, in one night, between the 18th and 19th of March 1944.
"At six in the morning, dad was still a child. He slept in a large bed alongside his father, my grandfather, under the big blanket. My grandfather was a fat man, And his warm breaths were a sane, soothing metronome in a world which had gone mad. At exactly six in the morning, dad heard his grandma, Hermina: “Ya, Biteh, Biteh” she said to someone in German, and the bedroom door opened. “Bela” she said to my grandfather, “there’s a German soldier at the door who wants to see you.”
"The soldier didn’t wait. He followed her into the bedroom, holding a rifle, in a greenish-gray uniform, with the letters “SS” on the corner of his collar, remarkably kind. “Doctor Lampel,” he said, “please get dressed.” My grandfather rose and got dressed. “The bag,” he told his mother, and she left and returned with a bag.
"There was no need to pack. Since the start of the war, every Jew in Europe had a bag ready to go. My great-grandmother took a step or two towards the blonde soldier with his bayonet, and when she got really close to him, she grabbed the headrest and slowly, as old people do, got down on her knees. The German was silent. She hugged his knees, clinging to his polished boots. She lifted her head, searching out his blue eyes.
"Sir," she said, "do not forget that your mother is also waiting for you at home." And then she added, "God bless you."
"The German's face contorted for a moment, and then he nodded his head at my grandfather. It's time."
The Numbering of Humans
"My grandfather bent down and lifted the blanket off my dad. Dad cried. He hugged my dad and said the words which in one night, turned my father into a grown man: “My child,” he said, “either I’ll see you again alive, or not.” He never saw him again.
My grandfather was sent to Auschwitz, and after that, he was sent here, to Mauthausen. When he arrived here, he was no longer a dad, he was no longer fat, he was no longer a person. He was a number.
"The Nazis went to great lengths to number their prisoners. My grandfather, like everyone who came to Auschwitz, had a number tattooed on his arm. The archives were organized. Tens of thousands of notebooks with careful documentation of prisoners. They did this because it allowed them to tell themselves “This isn’t murder, it’s statistics.” That they weren’t killing people who did them no harm, but rather, deleting numbers from a notebook.
I came here today to remind the world that Bela Lampel was not a number. He was my grandfather. He loved his beautiful wife. He went to football matches with his child. He loved to have an omelet at the coffee shop next to his home. He never wronged anyone. He wasn’t an important man. He didn’t hate anyone. He was simply… Jewish.
"So they took him in the middle of the night, and sent him from camp to camp until he arrived here. When he arrived here, the Nazis already knew that they had lost the war. The mighty machine that was the German Army had collapsed. They needed every soldier, every slice of bread, every rifle - and yet, they continued to kill Jews up until the very last moment.
According to the records here at Mauthausen, my grandfather died in April 1945. A couple of weeks later, Nazi Germany surrendered. That was the last significant thing the Nazis did - killing my grandfather. But dying was not the last significant thing that he did. Because my grandfather did one other thing, even if he did it after his death: He sent me here today.
"Grandpa Bela, a quiet man whose family nickname was “Bela the Wise”, sent me here today to say on his behalf, that the Jews have not surrendered. They’ve established a strong, free, and proud Jewish state, and they sent his grandson, to represent them here today.
"The Nazis thought they were the future, and that Jews would be something you only find in a museum. Instead, the Jewish state is the future, and Mauthausen is a museum.
Rest in peace, grandfather, you won."
Chairing the IHRA
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director-General Alon Ushpiz announced Thursday at Yad Vashem’s official ceremony commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day that Israel has submitted its candidacy for the chairmanship of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance for 2025, the year in which the organization will mark 25 years since its establishment, and 80 years since the end of WWII.
Dir-Gen Ushpiz also highlighted the 37 Righteous Among the Nations diplomats whose actions serve as a moral compass for the entire diplomatic community, and a call to never give up on our values.
Dir-Gen Ushpiz: “As the last remaining witnesses of the atrocities of the Holocaust are slowly leaving us, we have both the responsibility and the obligation to take action in order to strengthen all institutions and organizations that are dealing with the cause [of Holocaust denial and distortion]”.