Premier Menachem Begin said today that the principal lesson of the Holocaust was never to underrate those who declare their intention to kill Jews. One of the reasons the Holocaust occurred, he said at the Martyrs and Heroes Memorial Day ceremony at the Yad Vashem here, was the lack of motivation among diaspora Jews to leave their countries and immigrate to Israel.
According to Begin, the Jewish partisans who fought in the ghettos during World War II raised their flag not only against the Nazis but against the enlightened world which knew of the annihilation of Jews but failed to save them.
Begin kindled the eternal flame at the Yizkor (Remembrance) tent at the Yad Vashem, opening the ceremonies which were attended by the entire Cabinet and members of the World Zionist Organization Executive. Inter ior Minister Yosef Burg recited the Kaddish. The ceremony ended in front of the Warsaw uprising monument outside the Yad Vashem building.
It was one of several memorial ceremonies which began last night at the Yad Vashem, attended by more than 1,000 Holocaust survivors, soldiers new immigrants and others, including President Yitzhak Navon. The theme of the memorial is the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
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