PM Netanyahu's Remarks at the "Unto Every Person There is a Name" Ceremony
at the Knesset
(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)

Following are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks today (Monday, 8
April 2013), on the occasion of Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance
Day
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Anti-Semitism+and+the+Holocaust/Documents+and+communiques/Holocaust_Remembrance_Day_2013.htm
, at the Knesset, during the "Unto Every Person There is a Name"
http://knesset.gov.il/spokesman/eng/PR_eng.asp?PRID=10700
ceremony:

"President Peres,

Knesset Speaker Edelstein,

Honored Rabbis,

Ministers

and MKs,

My father-in-law, Shmuel Ben-Artzi
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/11/09/3090197/shmuel-ben-artzi-father-of-sara-netanyahu-dies
who left us in November 2011, was a brand plucked from the fire. He came to
the country when he was 18, from the town of Bilgoraj in Poland, despite the
strong opposition of his father. He was sent as an outstanding student of
the Novardok yeshiva in order to open a branch here in Bnei Brak. He soon
went to the orchards and decided that he had to redeem the soil of the Land
of Israel; he worked in the orchards for seven years. Afterwards, he became
a teacher in Tiberias. He was a great teacher, a leading educator. He held a
Bible study class for adults for 30 years, for the same people for 30 years.

He was a major Bible researcher but he was also a great writer and a great
poet. His first poems were written in the Land of Israel, at the beginning
of the war, when they still did not know, when he did not know, that his
family had been slaughtered and that European Jewry, which had been so dear
to him, had also gone up in flames. But the reek of the ovens somehow
reached him.

Here is what he wrote in early 1943: 'It wasn't me, it wasn't me, whose
mouth gaped for bread and soup. It was someone else who ate, drank and
didn't choke. In my nostrils the smoke of the offering – my innocent
people! – did not rise. My eyes did not read the newspaper, my brothers for
an innocent death! It wasn't me who dashed his head against that rock. It
wasn't my heart that has yet to burst, even if it is as strong as flint. A
spirit of dread has entered me and it is lashing out, it was sane! An army
of demons has built for itself a fortress in my slack body. It is not my hot
and red blood that has clotted. It wasn't me who did not pluck up my soul in
my madness.'

I do not think that Shmuel ever recovered from the Holocaust even though he
built a splendid family. He never recovered from the murder of his beloved
twin sister and her family. He asked that their names be etched on his
grave, and it was done, and I will read their names:

His father, Moshe Hahn, his father's wife Ita, his twin sister Yehudit, who
was 24.

His brothers Meir Hahn (18), Shimon Tzvi (16) and Aryeh Leib (13), and his
little sister Feizele.

His aunt Ma'tel Koenigstein, her son Hillel and her eldest daughter. His
uncle Mendel, his wife and their two children.

His uncle Avraham Tauber, his wife and their son and daughter. His aunt
Rachel Tauber and her three sons – Avraham, Yaakov and Shlomo, and their
wives and children. His aunt Hinda and her husband Yehezkel. His aunt
Hendel, her husband and their children. His aunt Paula and her two
daughters.

May their memories be blessed."