Obama Mentions Mumbai Attack

By COLive reporter
Photos by Shmulik Photography

U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a landmark speech about the rise of global anti-Semitism during a historic visit at the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.

He spoke at the Righteous Among the Nations Award Ceremony marking n International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

This was the first time the ceremony, organized by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Israel, was held in the United States. Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, was present for the speech.

In his remarks, President Obama talked about the responsibility to fight anti-Semitism and mentioned the 2008 terror attack on the Chabad House in Mumbai, India, which claimed the lives of 5 Jews including the Shluchim Rabbi Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg.

“Here, tonight, we must confront the reality that, around the world, anti-Semitism is on the rise. We cannot deny it. When we see some Jews leaving major European cities because they no longer feel safe; when Jewish centers are targeted from Mumbai to Overland Park, Kansas; when swastikas appear on college campuses; when we see all that and more, we must not be silent,” he said.

“An attack on any faith is an attack on all of our faiths. It is an attack on that Golden Rule at the heart of so many faiths — that we ought to do unto others as we would have done to us. For Americans, in particular, we should understand that it’s an attack on our diversity, on the very idea that people of different backgrounds can live together and thrive together,” he added.

The President was introduced by filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who is dedicated to recording and preserving the testimonies of those who suffered the horrors of the Holocaust and those who risked their lives to save them.

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At the ceremony, Yad Vashem posthumously recognized 4 individuals who heroically risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazis, forever demonstrating the importance of standing up to intolerance and hatred everywhere.

Paying tribute to the four honorees, the President declared: “When any Jew anywhere is targeted, just for being Jewish, we must respond, together, as did Roddie Edmonds—We are all Jews.”

The honorees:

* Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds participated in the landing of the American forces in Europe and was taken prisoner by the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge. While in captivity, the Germans ordered the captured Jewish POWs at the camp to report. Master Sergeant Edwards, the highest-ranking American non-commissioned officer, ordered all of the U.S. soldiers to stand together, and he announced to the German officer, “We are all Jews.” The German officer gave up, and the Jewish soldiers’ lives were saved.

* Lois Gunden was an American teaching in France who helped smuggle Jewish children out of an internment camp and into a children’s home she established.

* Walery and Maryla Zbijewski were a Polish couple who put their lives at risk to secretly house a Jewish child in Warsaw for several months.

By recounting the heroism of those who lived their values, the President affirmed the responsibility we all share to stand up against anti-Semitism, hatred and intolerance in all its forms, said a spokesman.

Among the guests at the ceremony was Rabbi Levi Shemtov and his wife Nechama Shemtov, Chabad Shluchim of Washington, DC. The President made it a point to personally greet Rabbi Shemtov, Vice President of American Friends of Lubavitch.