Peres, at Warsaw uprising rally: Israel will avenge Holocaust through peace

15/04/2008

Peres, at Warsaw uprising rally: Israel will avenge Holocaust
through peace

By Lily Galili, Haaretz Correspondent

President Shimon Peres delivered an address at a ceremony
marking 65 years since the Warsaw ghetto uprising, stating that
peace is the way in which Israel must avenge the horrors of the
Holocaust.

"During times of intifadas and [Iranian] uranium enrichment, it
is through peace that the forces of light can avenge the actions
of the forces of darkness."

On Monday, Peres did not grant the Poles penance or absolution
on Monday. Nevertheless, when he said at the foot of the
memorial at the Treblinka death camp: "It is difficult to stand
here, not because of you, but because of what was here," Peres
was saying out loud, alongside Polish President Lech Kaczynski,
what the Polish people had been hoping to hear.

For years the Poles have been waiting for recognition that even
if the horrors of the Holocaust may have taken place on their
soil, they did not carry them out.

As Peres looked at the Israeli soldiers and youth groups
accompanying him, he added: "If we had had these soldiers and
young people then, this would not have happened to us, and it
will not happen to us in the future. We will not let the beast
go crazy again," the president said.

Monday's event at Treblinka was the first of Peres' four-day
official visit to Poland.

Given the complex relations with Poland, the visit also has two
layers: the Jewish part, which includes marking the 65th
anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt; and the diplomatic
side, in which Peres will meet with the Polish prime minister
and give a speech in Hebrew in parliament.

However, in Poland, the two halves of the visit are not truly
separate, and are interlinked, as at Treblinka on Monday.

When Kaczynski spoke of the good relations between the
countries, which he only wants to improve, he mentioned in the
same breath the Polish righteous gentiles who risked their lives
to save Jews during the Second World War; and thanked Peres for
his support of the nomination of one of them, Irena Sendler, for
the Nobel Peace Prize.

All the ceremonies commemorating the Holocaust are similar to
one another ¬ and each is awe-inspiring in its own way. 880,000
Jews were murdered at Treblinka, most from Poland. The way to
Treblinka passes through dozens of quiet towns and roads, with
statues of Jesus and Mary standing at intersections. However,
all this piety is forgotten in the face of the 17,000 crooked
granite stones spread out over the grounds of the death camp,
giving it the look of a surrealistic graveyard partially hidden
in the forest.

Three quarters of the Polish Jews murdered here were from
Warsaw, coming from the ghetto whose mythological bravery will
be commemorated in a ceremony today.

Kaczynski, previously the mayor of Warsaw, did not forget to
mention where the residents of his city who were killed here
came from.

But an Israeli cloud of disagreement was hovering over the
events. Joining the visit was former defense and foreign
minister Moshe Arens, who has been dedicating a large part of
his retirement to proving the part played by the Beitar
revisionist movement in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Arens claims
the official histories have written them out of the story. When
asked about this, Peres chose to answer diplomatically, saying
he honors all the fighters and victims.

Sixty-five years later, it seems Israel is reaching a certain
level of balanced understanding with the Poles, but is still
waging an internal battle on the history being written about the
various groups. "Is there a single Jewish heart that does not
tremble from the intensity of the pain and the greatness of the
achievement?" wondered Peres at a meeting with 300 members of
the Warsaw Jewish community at the end of a long day.

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