I welcome you today to the award ceremony of the Creative Expression Competition: "From the Concentration Camps to the Unknown - The Tomorrow of Survivors", organized by the Directorate of Secondary General Education of the Ministry of Education, Sports and Youth (MESY), as part of the events of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The competition was addressed to students of secondary schools, high schools, technical schools and private schools. Despite their demanding programme, the participation of our students was overwhelming and the interest was very high. The themes of the competition concerned personal and collective stories of named and anonymous Holocaust survivors and their lives after the concentration camps. The Nazis and their collaborators in other countries persecuted every Jew - from the most prominent professional to the humblest worker - in their ruthless search for the 'final solution' to the 'Jewish question'. Through organized massacres, mass shootings, internment in concentration camps - such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau and Treblinka - and murder in gas chambers, by the end of the war most of Europe's Jewish population - some six million people - had perished.
It is true that it is not easy to talk about the Holocaust. A crime of such proportions that it has etched the collective memory deeply and indelibly, creating an intractable wound. However, our students managed, with great sensitivity and empathy, to convey the meaning of the competition, with the help of their teachers. Through written texts, works of art and short film productions, they gave their personal stamp and expressed their own resistance to all forms of intolerance, so that tragic situations of the past - where man reaches the ultimate evil, as perpetrator, and the ultimate limit of human endurance, as victim - are not repeated.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear children,
The annual creative expression contest of the Secondary General Education Directorate, with the cooperation of the Embassy of Israel, aims to preserve in the collective memory of this atrocious act and to prevent a similar crime. The knowledge and experience gained by our students are a measure to curb anti-Semitism, but, at the same time, a means of remembering - commemorating, if you will - the millions of dead who were senselessly murdered by the Nazi regime.
I also take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to holocaust survivor Rina Revach for her response and her willingness to participate in the lectures organized nationwide. The lectures conveyed to more than 1000 students and teachers of secondary education the experiences and experiences that marked her life, both during the Occupation and during her youth.
I would like to express my warmest congratulations to all the students who took part in the Competition, to the teachers, and to the officials of the Ministry of Education and Science for their tireless efforts for the implementation of the activities. I would also like to express special thanks to the Embassy of Israel, which always stands by all the events of the International Holocaust Day, and especially to our friend Ambassador Mr. Oren Anolik for his continuous support.
IP
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