Jacob Kornbluh
The Forward, Jan. 27, 2022
“I still remember him telling me the story of the shock that he encountered when he entered the concentration camp and saw the survivors, the piles of bodies and the unbearable stench. It was a formative experience in his life.”
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israel’s new ambassador to the U.S. warned of rising antisemitism and the costs of widespread ignorance about the Holocaust.
‘When we say ‘never again,’ it is not only that we don’t want such a horrendous phenomenon to recur. But it is the acknowledgment that something similar to that may recur,” Michael Herzog said Thursday in his first interview with an American news outlet since he became ambassador in November.
Herzog, a retired brigadier general in the Israel Defense Forces, also discussed his family’s commitment to protecting Jews during and after the Holocaust and in strengthening Israel. His father, Chaim Herzog, served as president of Israel from 1983 and 1993. His grandfather, Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog, pleaded with President Franklin Roosevelt to protect the Jews from the Nazis.
Jacob Kornbluh is the Forward’s senior political reporter. Follow him on Twitter @jacobkornbluh or email kornbluh@forward.com.
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