Isaac Herzog: It is our duty as the living to fight evil everywhere

Herzog said that we must "heed the warning and take to heart the lessons of the Holocaust."

By TAMAR URIEL-BEERI
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Dannon alongside Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel Isaac Herzog walk alongside one another during the March of the Living, 2019. (photo credit: EYTAN HALON)
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Dannon alongside Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel Isaac Herzog walk alongside one another during the March of the Living, 2019.
(photo credit: EYTAN HALON)
Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel Isaac Herzog spoke on Thursday evening at the March of the Living in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Berkenau, saying that it is "our duty as the living" to have a "good heart" that "fights against evil everywhere."
Herzog told the story of his father, former president Chaim Herzog, who landed with the British forces in Normandy to liberate Europe in the summer of 1944, later making his way to the liberation of the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen in 1945. "He recalled to me that as he entered the camp, the smell was unbearable," Herzog said of his father. "The scenes were inhumane and unimaginable."
"The pain will stay with us Jews forever," Herzog emphasized. "And it must stay with all of humanity forever."
Herzog then called on world leaders to battle antisemitism, stating that "it cannot be that 74 years after this wretched war, Jews are once again unsafe on the streets of Europe."
"Jews cannot be murdered in Pittsburgh and San Diego or anywhere!" he said. "Let us heed the warning and take to heart the lessons of the Holocaust. World leaders must unite in zero tolerance for hate crimes of any kind."
Speaking of Tikkun Olam, or the Jewish belief in reparation of the world, Herzog said that "even after suffering the worst atrocity of humankind," the Jewish people "remain committed" to the ideal.
"The other week, a group of groundbreaking Israeli scientists used a 3D printer to recreate a heart," he told the audience. "And I said to myself [that] it is no coincidence that the first organ they managed to print his the heart."
"We need a good heart in the body and soul of our people," he declared. "We need a good, new heart in the leadership of humanity: a heart that fights against evil everywhere."


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