Tel-Chai Nation: Israeli president Isaac Herzog's speech at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial service

While Herzog may be a leftist, an important distinction between him and some others is that he seems to know how to remain apolitical, and refrain from taking divisive positions most of the time. Here's what he had to say for Holocaust Memorial Day:

Israeli President Isaac Herzog spoke Wednesday at the State's Opening Ceremony for Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day 2022 at Yad Vashem.

"There are moments in which a single photograph, in black and white, tells the whole story and echoes all the words that could be said," Herzog began. "I stand here before you, carrying with me, etched on my heart, such a photograph. It is a rare photograph, which nobody who sees it can ever forget."

"The eyes see, the mind grasps, yet the soul refuses to believe that what appears in black and white is in fact blacker than black."

He continued, "It is not a photograph about big numbers, about thousands, tens of thousands, or millions. It is a photograph of a single Jewish family. A family executed by diabolical Nazi jackboots and their collaborators."

"A mother and her children on the edge of a pit. Rifle butts touching her back. We cannot see the woman's face, nor her children's. A moment before her body collapses into the pit of death, she bends over her infant children. And in a single moment, all the rifles send up a plume of smoke.

"They shoot her together, not making do with a single bullet. Coordinated. Efficient. One child slips beneath her. With her last ounces of strength, the mother grasps her little boy's hand, sitting on his knees barefoot, on soil drenched with blood.

"What did the mother whisper in her little boy's ear? Did she beg him not to cry? And what of the child? Did he cry? Did he stay silent? Did he understand? Was he afraid? The photograph is silent, but its voice cries out. It shakes us. It stuns us to silence.

"Do not murder." (Exodus 20:13)

"Do not raise your hand against the boy." (Genesis 11:12)

"Do not take the mother together with her young." (Deuteronomy 22:1)

"Do not slaughter it on the same day with its young." (Leviticus 22:28)

"This photograph was taken on 13 October 1941. When I saw it in a book by the historian Dr. Wendy Lower, a book about this photograph, and this photograph alone, I felt my entire essence being turned upside down inside me with grief, with fury, with pain."