Visiting the Yad Vashem exhibit in the United Nations building in honor of International Holocaust Day, Cabinet Minister Yuli Edelstein compares the Nazis’ “final solution” with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “The same twisted mindset that came up with the concentration camps is operative now in Iran as well to use atomic power to destroy Israel,” Edelstein said at the U.N. ceremony. Diaspora Affairs and Information Minister Edelstein oversees Israel’s public relations and information efforts abroad. The United Nations and some 20 countries around the world have designated Wednesday, January 27, as International Holocaust Day since 1996. The date was originally commemorated as such in individual countries for having been the anniversary of the Russian liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, and has now been adopted on an international scale. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was also in attendance at the Yad Vashem exhibit, as was Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gabriela Shalev. The exhibit, a mobile version of the "Architecture of Murder" exhibit in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, shows the plans of the Auschwitz camp that were given to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu last August. “You notice the tremendous detail and complexity in the Auschwitz blueprints,” Edelstein said. “Only a twisted and obsessive mind is able to invest so much time and detail in plans to destroy an entire nation. This happened 60 years ago, but the same obsession is found in the mind of a dictator, Ahmedinajad, who has systematically worked with his government for many years to develop weapons of mass destruction that could be used once again to murder six million Jews.” “Here in the UN, of all places, we must emphasize the urgency of stopping these evil and threatening plans,” Edelstein exhorted his listeners. Last year’s Holocaust exhibit at the UN focused on the courageous men and women who helped rescue Jews during World War II, and another previous exhibit, entitled “No Child's Play – Remembrance and Beyond,” zeroed in on children’s lives during the Holocaust.
