Prime Ministers as Historians: Israeli Leaders’ Holocaust Memorial Day Speeches (1962–2018)

• In Event: Potpourri: Israeli Public Politics & Performance

Abstract

Each year on the eve of the 27th of Nissan, Israel’s national Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony takes place in Jerusalem at Yad Vashem. Besides the lighting of six torches for the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, a key part of the ceremony is a speech by Israel’s prime minister. My presentation focuses on an analysis of the prime ministers’ commemorative speeches since 1962, soon after the memorial day law was passed. I will ask, How do Israel’s prime ministers portray the Holocaust? What, in their view, is the role of the world’s nations in this catastrophe? What conceptions of Jewish history emerge from these speeches? How do they portray the relation between the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel? How do these depictions change over time? Do their accounts correspond to or differ from the collective memory of the Holocaust that has dominated Israeli society during this period? Do these elected officials include political messages in their speeches?
Most of the speeches of Israel’s leaders on Holocaust Memorial Day focus on “the historical lesson of the Holocaust,” paying only limited attention to the Holocaust itself and its events. The prime ministers frame the Holocaust as a cornerstone of the state: Earlier speakers focused on the rebels as the ones who imbued Israeli fighters with the requisite drive and courage; more recent speakers have focused on the victims as the moral guiding spirit of the state. The speeches have also enabled premiers to draw lessons from the Holocaust that touch upon current social and political issues in Israel. Topics that have a relatively broad consensus, such as the campaign to free Soviet Jewry or the opposition to the Iranian nuclear program, are conveyed implicitly or explicitly in these speeches. In sum, in many ways the Holocaust Memorial Day speeches of Israeli prime ministers are statements that are more about Israeli society and its historical foundation than about the Holocaust as a historical event.

Author

• Dan Porat, Hebrew University of Jerusalem