Lessons of Holocaust Must Be Applied to Assure Israel’s Future Security

The lessons of the Nazi Holocaust must be applied to assure Israel’s future security. That theme was sounded by both Premier Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan speaking today at memorial assemblies commemorating the six million Jews destroyed by the Nazis. Mrs. Meir spoke at a ghetto fighters’ kibbutz in Western Galilee. Dayan addressed an audience estimated at 10,000 at Yad Mordecai, a kibbutz north of the Gaza Strip named in memory of Mordecai Anilewkz, the commander of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943.

Mrs. Meir said, “We must learn the lesson of the Holocaust. Before the eyes of the whole world it was possible to murder and burn six million people. From that bitter, unprecedented experience we must know that we cannot rely on anyone. We can rely only on ourselves.”

Dayan said. “The Holocaust memories must be translated into everyday terms here at Yad Mordecai which was a buffer protecting Tel Aviv in 1948 and a neighbor of the Gaza Strip ever since. We must never let the Strip serve as a base for Egyptian tanks or for hostile operations against Israel. We must not permit a young generation (of Arabs) to grow up in the Strip as in a hothouse on dreams of destroying Israel.”

He added that “In our own generation of revival, we cannot ignore the problem presented by the 350,000 Arabs of the Strip–100,000 of them refugees. We must strive for the best possible human relations and neighborly ties.” Dayan stressed that the purpose of remembering the Holocaust was not merely to ensure that it is not forgotten but to ensure that it will never happen again.