A tweet posted by Israel’s Education Minister Yoav Kisch marking Holocaust Remembrance Day generated intense backlash on Tuesday, with critics claiming that the Likud politician’s language echoed that of Nazis.
The tweet in question read “One nation! One flag! One country! We will remember and not forget.” Accompanying the text was a photo of himself together with Israeli students taking part in the March of the Living at Auschwitz,the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp in Poland.
Education Minister Kisch at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, on Tuesday, March 18, 2023 (Screenshot of Kisch’s Twitter account)
Kisch’s tweet was greeted with significant pushback online, with many responding with images of German propaganda posters and other material bearing the Nazi slogan “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer,” which translates to “One People, One Nation, One Leader.”
“Does the Minister of Education know the source of the quote,” asked Communist Party leading member and lawmaker Ofer Cassif (Hadash). Prof. Hagai Levine, the past chairman of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians, said that it was “really sad to read such a tweet on such a day from an uneducated minister.”