Photo by
Maayan Toaf, GPO/TPS-IL on 24 April, 2025
At Auschwitz, Israeli and Polish Presidents Urge Global Action Against Hatred and Terror
Jerusalem, 24 April, 2025 (TPS-IL) -- President Isaac Herzog of Israel and Polish President Andrzej Duda met at the Auschwitz concentration camp on Thursday as Israel marked Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Holocaust Remembrance Day, also known as Yom HaShoah, is the day Israel commemorates the six million Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust. National ceremonies began at sundown on Wednesday and the nation marked two minutes of silence on Thursday morning. The day also marks the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation.
Herzog and Duda visited Auschwitz’s Jewish Pavilion and viewed the Book of Names, which documents the names of Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Later, they made joint statements to the press.
“In Auschwitz – the extermination camp where over a million of my people, Jews, were murdered simply for being Jews… Of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, half – three million – were Poles. This is an unimaginable number,” Herzog said.
Herzog spoke emotionally about the destruction of Polish Jewry and referenced the writings of Janusz Korczak, the Polish-Jewish educator who perished alongside the children in his care. “The thirst for water and flight, for freedom and man… The soul yearns in the narrow cage of the body,” Herzog said.
Herzog also referred to the 59 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. “Although after the Holocaust we swore, ‘Never again’; today… dozens of Jews are once again ‘longing from a cage,’ and ‘thirsting for water and freedom,’” he said. “The return of the kidnapped is a universal human imperative.”
Herzog thanked Duda and Poland for standing with Israel following the Hamas assault. “Poland stood up for the right of the State of Israel… to self-defense,” he noted. He further called on the international community to unite against “the Iranian octopus of hatred and terrorism,” warning that Iran threatens not only Israel but global stability.
Duda stressed the importance of speaking out against hatred. “We must not remain silent towards manifestations of racial, ethnic hatred. If we remain silent, the end result could be like what was done here by the Germans in World War II,” he said.
Duda also expressed solidarity with Israel in the face of ongoing conflict. “I expressed hope that we will be able to end it, and that the hostages in Hamas’ hands will be able to return home,” he said.
