“May Their Memory Be a Blessing”: Netanyahu Delivers Emotional Holocaust Remembrance Day Tribute, Weaving National History with Family Tragedy

By: Fern Sidman

In one of the most emotionally resonant addresses of his political career, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a deeply personal tribute on Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day, speaking at the Knesset’s annual “Unto Every Person There is a Name” ceremony. As reported by Israel National News on Thursday, the Prime Minister departed from political rhetoric to reflect on a figure whose life embodied both the triumph and trauma of Jewish survival: his late father-in-law, Shmuel Ben-Artzi.

What unfolded was not just a personal eulogy, but a powerful weaving of private sorrow into the national tapestry of Jewish history, illustrating the indivisible link between Holocaust memory and the identity of the modern Jewish state.

Netanyahu opened his remarks by recounting how in 1933, at the dawn of Nazi rule in Germany, Shmuel Ben-Artzi—then Shmuel Hahn—left his hometown of Biłgoraj, Poland, determined to make a new life in the Land of Israel. The Prime Minister described the heart-wrenching moment when Shmuel’s father, Moshe, accompanied him part of the way to Warsaw, urging him to stay in Europe.

“His father tried to persuade him by using some of the values he had learned at home, which he loved dearly,” Netanyahu shared, according to the INN report. “‘What will you do there?’ his father asked. ‘You have nothing over there.’”

Despite this, young Shmuel followed his Zionist ideals and emigrated. “He wanted with all his heart to be a pioneer,” Netanyahu said. “He would build the foundation in Bnei Brak.”

For eight years, Shmuel worked in orchards, embodying the ethos of physical labor and rebirth that defined the Yishuv era. Later, he turned to education, leaving an indelible mark as “the educator”—a term Netanyahu emphasized was affectionately used by both political and cultural figures who had once been his students.

Shmuel Ben-Artzi’s legacy extended beyond classrooms. As the report at Israel National News noted, he was a renowned Bible scholar, personally invited by David Ben-Gurion to participate in the country’s first official Tanach (Bible) study group. Uniquely, he held military honors from both the Irgun and the Haganah—two rival Jewish underground organizations in pre-state Israel—emphasizing his broad appeal across political spectrums.

But behind his achievements lay a reservoir of deep personal tragedy. Shmuel had continued sending money to his family in Poland until World War II erupted and all contact ceased.

“He realized that something terrible had happened,” Netanyahu said, as noted in the Israel National News report. “He expressed this in several moving poems expressing longing but mostly despair.”

Shmuel channeled his grief into Holocaust literature, earning the Ka-Tzetnik Prize for his poetry. One of the poems Netanyahu read aloud during his speech, “To Europe,” stunned the audience with its haunting imagery:

“They drown my people in blood, and my Lord is silent…

From Europe, left the Torah, and from Germany, the creed;

Killed and strangled, murdered and slaughtered!

For the ‘Jude’ a bullet’s a waste — Only poisonous gas in a closed trailer…”

Israel National News reported that the poem, a chilling meditation on divine silence and human cruelty, served as a literary reckoning with the magnitude of the Holocaust and the emotional toll it exacted on survivors like Shmuel.

Netanyahu then paused to read the names of Shmuel’s murdered family members—his parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, and cousins from Biłgoraj and Tarnogród, all of whom perished in the Holocaust.

“In this genocide, my father-in-law’s entire family from Biłgoraj and Tarnogród in Poland perished,” Netanyahu solemnly stated.

As the Israel National News report emphasized, this act of remembrance exemplified the ceremony’s mission: to restore the humanity behind the numbers, to reaffirm that “unto every person there is a name.”

Netanyahu reflected on Shmuel’s final years and his enduring bond with his daughter, Yehudit, the Prime Minister’s wife.

“Even during the last days before he passed away, whenever I mentioned Yehudit’s name, he would cry,” Netanyahu said. “He always cried.”

Netanyahu closed his speech with the words etched into the collective soul of the Jewish people: “May their memory be a blessing. May G-d avenge their blood.”

As the report at Israel National News observed, the Prime Minister’s address went beyond political responsibility—it was an act of intergenerational mourning, of testifying for those whose voices were silenced.

In an age when Holocaust denial and distortion are on the rise, Netanyahu’s speech served as a fierce affirmation of Jewish continuity, memory, and justice. Through his father-in-law’s story, the Prime Minister reminded Israelis and the world that the Holocaust is not only a historical event, but a living wound, and an enduring pillar of Jewish identity.

In anchoring his national address in a personal narrative, Netanyahu followed in the tradition of leaders who understand that memory must be both collective and intimate. As the report at Israel National News noted, the Prime Minister’s speech was a powerful demonstration of how the Holocaust is not a distant past, but a living force that shapes the Israeli spirit, mission, and moral compass.

At a time of rising global antisemitism and renewed threats to the Jewish people, Netanyahu’s words were not only a remembrance—they were a call to resilience, to hold fast to memory, and to ensure that the lessons of the Shoah are never forgotten, nor repeated.