Fittingly, Israel’s Silvan Shalom was the first foreign minister to speak. “In one of the most famous passages of the Bible, the prophet [Ezekiel] describes how he came to a valley full of bones,” Shalom said. “The bones, says Ezekiel, are the House of Israel. And the bones are dry, and their hope is lost. Faced with this scene, he asks the question: ‘Shall these bones live?’ Ezekiel asked the question that every liberator of the camps asked himself: ‘Can any hope or humanity emerge from such horror? Shall these bones live?’”
“The dry bones have lived again not only in the lives of the survivors, but also in two entities established on the ashes of the Holocaust: the United Nations and the modern State of Israel,” Shalom said. “The tragedy of the Holocaust was a major impetus in the reestablishment of the Jewish people's home, in its ancient land.”