Dear Friends, On this memorial day of the opening of Holocaust Education Center, we are very happy and honored to have your presence in our midst.
　In April 1971, while I was traveling in Israel with Shinonome Chorus, I met an elderly gentleman. He introduced himself as a survivor from Auschwitz and the father of Anne Frank. You can imagine how surprised we were. It was a miracle that God provided. It was also an encounter with the Holocaust for me.
　Until 1980, when Mr. Otto Frank passed away, we had kept very close contact with each other. I often visited his home in Switzerland. Before he died, he sent us invaluable pictures and articles with a message. He said, "I sincerely hope that you will not only sympathize with Anne and others for their tragic deaths but also actually do something to create peace." I took his words as his will to me. I felt I had not only to talk about peace, but to do something about it. I thought that I had to carry out Anne's and Mr. Frank's will.
　This was the incentive to build this Holocaust Education Center. I believe that there is a profound meaning in building the Holocaust Education Center in Hiroshima where the Atomic Bomb was dropped. We, of course, realize that the issues of the Atomic Bomb and the Holocaust are completely different things. As to the former, it happened because of the war. As to the latter, the Jewish people were not fighting the war against Germany. They were massacred because they happened to be Jews. After fifty years people are forgetting about these, and the crisis of nuclear weapons and the crisis of Holocaust can be observed in the world today.
　We have to recognize this as an important issue of human race, that the disaster of nuclear weapons or of Holocaust could happen anywhere in the world. Unless we do something about this, mankind will repeat the same mistake of the past.
　In this sense, it is meaningful to have not Only Atomic Bomb Memorial Museum but also the Holocaust Education Center in Hiroshima Prefecture. We have just taken a small step. We want to promote this peace movement with your prayers and support. I ask your continued help and concern.
　Thank you. (From the opening address of the Holocaust Education Center)

Ernest Salomon, President of the Jewish Community of Japan

　During World War II, Hitler and the German Nazis planned to produce a pure Aryan race of mostly blond haired and blue eyed people and eliminate everybody else. This meant mainly the Jewish race and out of a total 16 million Jews worldwide, the Nazis were able to capture and kill about 6 million all over Europe. They also killed Gypsies, mentally and physically handicapped people and others. These people were rounded up, mostly at night when they slept, transported to various concentration camps, mostly in Germany and occupied Poland and killed in gas chambers, or through torture, shootings, hangings, starvation, etc. This terrible action is called Holocaust. Today in many countries, you will find museums dedicated to the Holocaust and showing the terrible things the Nazis did. In Japan, so far we had no such remembrance museum and we are most grateful to Nihon Israel Heiwano Tomonokai (Japanese Christian Friends of Israel) for having organized with their own funds and efforts this building, dedicated to the 1.5 million Jewish children among the 6 million Jews which were killed. The purpose of this education center and museum is to educate Japanese children to the inhuman atrocities which were practiced 50 years ago and to make sure that this will never happen again. The museum is dedicated to Anne Frank, a Dutch Jewish girl about whom you have read a lot and who was one of these 1.5 million children who perished 50 years ago. There will be many memorial events this year to remember the end of World War II. This museum is for the purpose to remember the worst of all crimes committed by humanity. There are only about 2,000 Jews living in Japan; every one of us has lost at least one loved one during this Holocaust and we are very grateful to Nihon Israel Heiwano Tomonokai (Japanese Christian Friends of Israel) that they remember what we suffered.

Photo7 (Pinhas Inbari before the drawings at the Holocaust)

Photo8 (Child's shoe)

Photo9 (The picture "Auschwitz Birkenau" and prisoner clothes)

Photo10 (Bowl and plate used at a camp )

The Emblem of the Holocaust Education Center
　This emblem was designed to commemorate the 1,500,000 Jewish Children murdered in the Holocaust. The striped star of David symbolizes the prison uniform used in the Auschwitz death camp. The three children raising their hands overlap with the figure of the prayer depicted in the Lamentations of Jeremiah and echoes his prayer for the life of children.

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