Stewart Rahr paid more than $600,000 to charter two 737 planes that flew 64 Knesset members and 30 concentration camp survivors from Tel Aviv to the horrid Auschwitz compound where more than 1 million Jews were killed by Nazis during the Holocaust.
In addition, Rahr also managed to arrange a performance by Italian singer Andrea Bocelli.
Rahr told the Times that he learned about the Auschwitz event from another entrepreneur, Toronto resident Israel “Yummy” Schachter.
“This event will be the most uplifting and emotional remembrance ceremony in Jewish history, a once-in-a-lifetime event,” Rahr told the Times.
Regarding the dwindling survivor population, event co-organizer Jonny Daniels said: “We are getting very close to the point where there will be no more firsthand accounts left. The onus falls on us . . . to understand what happened and to ensure it never repeats again.”
The ceremony occurred 69 years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, part of Hitler’s genocidal “Final Solution,” on January 27, 1945. This significant date now marks International Remembrance Day.
The gathering evoked strong emotions as legislators locked arms with survivors for a tour of the killing grounds. The 64 representatives make up more than half the 120-member Knesset, which rarely holds sessions outside Israel.
The Huffington Post reported that 20 survivors laid a wreath at the former camp’s Death Wall, where inmates were executed. Additionally, the Knesset also met their Polish counterparts and held a special session, unprecedented as it was outside of Israel. “If you want to visit your relatives, you go to Tel Aviv or New York,” said survivor David Frankel, a 77-year-old retired judge from Jerusalem who will be there for his fifth trip to the camp. “The only place I can visit is Auschwitz. I am going to unite with the memories of my relatives,” he told The Media Line news agency.
“They have no grave. I will say kaddish [the Jewish prayer of mourning] for them there.”
Issawi Frej, one of 12 Arab legislators in the Knesset, said he failed to convince the other 11 to join him for the trip.
“I think they are making a mistake,” he told The Media Line. “This is not a Jewish issue. It is a human issue and affects all of us.”
It’s unclear if any New York survivors are going. Several business leaders, including billionaires Carl Icahn, Michael Milken and Sheldon Adelson, will be on hand. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is expected to attend, along with top government officials from Israel and elected leaders from many nations.