President Reuven Rivlin meets with Polish President Andrzej Duda

JERUSALEM POST STAFF

The president is in Poland to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking 75 years since the liberation of Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

President Reuven Rivlin meets with Polish President Andrzej Duda on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2020
(photo credit: AMOS BEN GERSHOM, GPO)

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin is in Poland to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking 75 years since the liberation of Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The president met with Polish President Andrzej Duda, who rejected an invitation to come to Israel for last week’s World Holocaust Forum.

Later on Monday Rivlin will participate in a ceremony marking at Auschwitz-Birkenau along with survivors of the death camp, President Duda of Poland, President Steinmeier of Germany, the President of the World Jewish Congress Ron Lauder and the head of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Dr. Piotr Cywiński. Cywiński will also speak at the ceremony, which will conclude with the Kaddish and El Maleh Rachamim prayers.

President Reuven Rivlin lays a wreath with Polish President Andrzej Duda on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2020 (Photo Credit: Amos Ben Gershom/GPO)

Upon departing for Poland, Rivlin said, “The Jewish people are a people that remembers. Remembering is a fundamental building-block in our people’s heritage. It is that which demands of us to stand at Auschwitz, on German soil and in every place, to remember and to remind.

“The connection between the State of Israel and Poland is one that faces the future, from an unshakable commitment to remember the facts of the past,” the president continued. “I intend on inviting the President of Poland to visit Jerusalem, to continue discussions together in a way that can further strengthen our relations and the important areas of cooperation between our two countries.”