(25 Jan 2005)
Jerusalem
1. Various of Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre
2. Man looking at black and white photographs inside Yad Vashem centre
3. Various of black and white photographs of Auschwitz
Tel Aviv
4. Various of former Israeli Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau reading book
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Israel Meir Lau, former Israeli chief rabbi and Holocaust survivor:
"In history and mankind was never a genocide like the story of the Nazi period and Auschwitz is the symbol of it. Over 2 million people perished there, a million and a half of them Jews. There were battlefields, there were sacrifices, there were victims all over, but a system of final solution, how to liquidate a nation, as far as we know the history never happened. That's why 60 years later mankind remembers Auschwitz, which became as I said a flag of brutality, of cruelty, and a lesson (of) what a human being can be if he's not choosing the right way."
Jerusalem
6. Various of electronic exhibit at Yad Vashem showing layout of Auschwitz camp
Tel Aviv
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Israel Meir Lau, former Israeli chief rabbi and Holocaust survivor:
"For me, holocaust is one thing. There are things that you can never forget and you are not authorised to forgive. I remember the events of that horror. I was liberated (at) less than 8 years old. I cannot forget and I cannot forgive. I do remember and I do all the efforts (in the) last 60 years in order that this horror will be unforgettable, will be always remembered (in order) to promise that such an event will never reappear, not against the Jewish nation, not against another nation at all."
Jerusalem
8. Various of exhibit at Yad Vashem with can of poison gas, barbed wire, and ashes
Tel Aviv
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Israel Meir Lau, former Israeli chief rabbi and Holocaust survivor:
"I am afraid that holocaust will become in the future just a milestone in mankind's history, no more, because we survivors are in a decline, speaking in numbers. From day to day you have less survivors. The murderers, same thing, and they deny that they were murderers so it will be a station in the long history of mankind and I am afraid that events like Kosovo, or Rwanda, Zaire, Biafra, and many other places can, God forbid, appear again. And that's something that we survivors, this generation, has to do all the efforts to prevent such a horror."
10. Holocaust survivor at table, talking
STORYLINE:
Though it ended six decades ago, the Holocaust remains a fresh trauma in Israel, a tragedy that darkens Israeli society and forms an integral part of the national identity.
The Holocaust is everywhere; it is a tool used by hard-liners and doves to score political points and a reference point for cultural debates, and it hovers over the Middle East conflict, where Israel, despite its military superiority, still fears being wiped out.
Sensitivities remain raw, especially with an estimated 250,000 survivors still living in Israel.
Former Israeli Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau was born in Poland in 1937.
The first few years of his life were spent in a Jewish ghetto before his family was broken up by the Nazi authorities and he and his relatives sent to various concentration camps across Germany and Poland.
Lau was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, where Soviet forces liberated him in 1945.
But he stresses that Auschwitz has became the symbol of the evils of the Holocaust - the 'flag of brutality" that is a "lesson in what a human being can be if he's not choosing the right way."
Schools invite survivors to speak.
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