The event will open with an address by Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin. Additional speakers will include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US Vice President Mike Pence, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, Prince Charles, and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
46 heads of states, members of royalty, presidents, prime ministers and parliamentary leaders from Europe, North America and Australia will attend in Jerusalem the Fifth World Holocaust Forum, entitled “Remembering the Holocaust, Fighting Antisemitism.’
The event will mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Organized by the World Holocaust Forum Foundation, in cooperation with Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, it will take place on 23 January 2020 at Warsaw Ghetto Square in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.
“This is an unprecedented and historic event, the highest-level meeting ever held in Israel and on the issue of antisemitism,” declared Moshe Kantor, President of the World Holocaust Forum Foundation and initiator of the event. “We must use this event as a crucial and defining moment to build a global coalition of leaders who will send a strong and united message that antisemitism, in all of its forms, will not be tolerated and those who perpetrate it will be met with zero tolerance.”
The event will open with an address by Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin. Additional speakers will include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US Vice President Mike Pence, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, Prince Charles, and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Interspersed throughout the proceedings will be several short video clips and musical interludes performed by an international orchestra, conducted by world-renowned conductor Vladimir Spivakov and accompanied by an international choir.
After the addresses, the Memorial Ceremony segment will begin. Holocaust survivors Rose Moskowitz from the United States and Colette Avital, Chairperson of the Center Organization of Holocaust Survivors in Israel will light a memorial torch, after which heads of delegations will commemorate the victims of the Holocaust by laying wreaths at the foot of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Monument in Warsaw Ghetto Square at Yad Vashem.
Cantor Shai Abramson will recite the El Maleh Rahamim memorial prayer, followed by Holocaust survivor Naftali Deutsch who will say Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer. The ceremony will conclude with a moment of silence and Israel’s national anthem, Hatikvah.
Among the other leaders of nations and heads of delegation who have confirmed their presence are the president of Austria, Alexander Van der Bellen, King Felipe VI of Spain, King of the Netherlands William-Alexander, King Philippe of Belgium, the president of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Council, Charles Michel and the president of the European Parliament David Sassoli.