El Al pilot Ofer Aloni is the grandchild of two sets of grandparents murdered by the Nazis. He said he was honored for his airline to be flying a plane with the important message of “We Remember” as part of his commitment to remember Holocaust victims through his work.
“I’m sure my grandparents would be very proud to know that their grandson is flying an Israeli plane with an Israeli flag to Germany today,” Aloni said. “For me, as an Israeli and as a Jew, flying a plane with ‘we remember’ on it makes me very proud and emotional.”
Israeli national airline El Al flew a plane on Monday from Tel Aviv to Berlin that was affixed with a #WeRemember logo, to convey the necessity of remembering the dark past of the Holocaust in order to ensure such atrocities never happen again.
This partnership with the Israeli airliner is a first of its kind component of the World Jewish Congress’ fifth annual #WeRemember campaign to combat antisemitism and all forms of hatred, genocide and xenophobia.
The campaign, which runs through International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, promotes the importance and advancement of Holocaust education.
The El Al plane will be in circulation for the next year, promoting the need to remember the lessons of the Holocaust and the lives lost.
Learn more about this first time partnership between the World Jewish Congress’ #WeRemember campaign, which extends through International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday, January 27, and El Al.
El Al pilot Ofer Aloni is the grandchild of two sets of grandparents murdered by the Nazis. He said he was honored for his airline to be flying a plane with the important message of “We Remember” as part of his commitment to remember Holocaust victims through his work.
“I’m sure my grandparents would be very proud to know that their grandson is flying an Israeli plane with an Israeli flag to Germany today,” Aloni said. “For me, as an Israeli and as a Jew, flying a plane with ‘we remember’ on it makes me very proud and emotional.”
For Ronald S. Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress, ‘’increasing and expanding awareness of the Holocaust is the best way to honor the memory of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis and, through education, to end hate, xenophobia and bigotry.’’
‘’I am grateful to El Al Israel Airlines for dedicating a plane to this initiative, an act that brings us one step closer to making sure that future generations don’t repeat the horrors of the past.”
‘’Unfortunately, in recent years we have seen a disturbing resurgence of antisemitism and also concerted efforts to obfuscate the history of the Shoah,’’ said Director General of WJC Israel and the Israel Council on Foreign Relations Laurence Weinbaum.
With the theme, “Learn from the past, protect the future,” the 2021 #WeRemember initiative encourages participants from around the world to take pictures of themselves holding a sign with the words “We Remember,” and then post their pictures to social media using the hashtag #WeRemember, to spread the message that “never again” must mean never again.
“It’s our fervent hope that when this El Al plane arrives in Germany, and later lands at airports in other countries, it will give pause to those who see it,” Weinbaum said. “It will compel them to think about the Shoah, about the significance of the horrific things that happened in those terrible years.”
Young people today know little about the Holocaust and the fate of European Jewry under the Nazis. According to a September 2020 Claims Conference survey, 63% of U.S. millennials and Gen Z don’t know that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. 48 % cannot name a single concentration camp or ghetto established during WWII.
The #WeRemember campaign will symbolically culminate on January 27, at the site of the former German Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau with a live-streaming of participant photographs on a screen erected next to the camp’s gate and cattle car, as a testament to the Jewish people’s survival in the face of adversity.
