Next year we will commemorate 10 years since the UN passed its groundbreaking “Holocaust Remembrance” resolution and the creation of the United Nations Outreach Programme.   Both initiatives are intended to teach the lessons of the Holocaust and prevent future genocides. 

I would like to thank the organizers of this event, Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal and Robert Singer. I would also like to recognize and express our gratitude to today’s speakers: Olga Gershenson, Shirli Gilbert, Clive Marks, Stephen Mills, Nava Semel, and Naomi Warren. And of course, a big thank you to Kimberly Man for all her work and dedication making this and other events a great success.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Today, Israel commemorated Yom Hazikaron La'Shoah U La'Gvura - Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day.  On this solemn day, millions of Israelis and Jews throughout the world honor the victims who perished, the survivors who prevailed, and the heroes who refused to succumb in history’s darkest hour.  

We are all committed to remember. But it is not enough to remember. It never was.  The obligation is not a passive act.  We must actively stand guard - by protecting the defenseless, by teaching tolerance, by opposing bigotry and racism, and by taking action when words will not suffice.  If we cannot do all of this then the words ‘never again’ ring hollow

Sixty-nine years after the Holocaust, I look around and see a world plagued by prejudice.  As we speak, anti-Semitism is being sponsored and spread by governments, teachers, and religious leaders.  And as we speak, hundreds of thousands of people across the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere are being tortured, starved, hanged, and gassed to death by repressive tyrants who will do anything to cling to power.  Yet the world too often remains silent.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I speak to you today as an Israeli, as a Jew and as the son of a Holocaust survivor.  My father, Haim Hendrick Roet, was one of six children born to a family in Amsterdam. In 1942, when my father was ten years old, his family was uprooted from their home and sent to the ghetto.

Soon, the Nazis came for his family. His sisters, Henrietta and Rosina and grandfather were sent to Auschwitz where they were murdered.  My grandmother’s courage succeeded miraculously at the last moment to save my father and his brothers from the same fate.  My father was taken to a small village called Nieuw Amsterdam where a righteous Christian family risked their lives and hid him until the end of the war.

During my childhood my father rarely, if ever, spoke about his lost childhood and the horrors that his family endured.  Today he is determined that no victim of the Holocaust will be forgotten and that every one of the six million victims be remembered as a person with a name, a family, and a story. 

In order that the Holocaust not be forgotten and that its lessons be remembered, my father started “Unto Every Person There Is a Name” - an annual memorial event to read aloud names of Holocaust victims.  This year will be the 25th year that the names are read throughout the world.  While most of the Jews who perished in the Holocaust do not have a grave or a tombstone, this project is ensuring that every one of them has an eternal resting place in the memory of the Jewish people.

As the Israeli poet Zelda wrote:

That to each victim there is a name

Bestowed on him by God

And given to him by his parents.

Unto every person there is a name

Accorded him by his stature and type of smile

And style of dress.

Unto every person there is a name

Which he receives from the sea

And is given to him by his death

Like my father, countless survivors and their children have searched for ways to express the depth of their pain and sorrow and ensure that atrocities are not repeated.  Many found it too difficult to tell their story in words and turned to the arts. 

Through paintings and plays, dances and drawings, sculptures and songs, survivors and their children have given testimony.  Through art they tell about the six million innocent people - men, women, and children - sent to their deaths just for being Jewish.  Through art they tell the stories of fathers and mothers, and sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters who lived and loved, hoped and dreamed, just like all of us. 

Through art they teach an enduring lesson - that evil prevailed because people succumbed to their darkest instincts while others stood silent.  Through art they honor the resistance fighters -both Jewish and the Righteous Among the Nations - who stood against the tide of hatred and indifference and saved the lives of innocent Jews like my father. 

And through art we are reminded that the human spirit can endure the darkest hour and never be extinguished. 

Ladies and gentlemen,

To the survivors who are here today, thank you for not giving up.  To the men and women who have dedicated themselves to the cause of remembrance, thank you. Your courage inspires us to follow in your footsteps.  Never again can evil be allowed to take root.  Never again can silence prevail. Never again can indifference reign. 

Thank you.