German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on a short visit to Israel, visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Center with Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett on Wednesday morning. They were accompanied by Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan, and participated in an official memorial ceremony at the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem.
Scholz and Bennett were scheduled to hold a private meeting and a news conference later in the day.
Scholtz’s visit to Israel, his first since assuming the position of chancellor, comes in the midst of the Russo-Ukraine conflict and a day after Russian rockets struck the site in Ukraine of the Babi Yar massacre, where tens of thousands of Jews were massacred during the Holocaust.
“The first stop on your visit to Israel, your first as Chancellor of Germany, is also the most important. The Holocaust, the systematic annihilation of Jews, is the wound that forms the basis of ties between Germany and Israel. From this wound we have built significant and steadfast relations,” Bennett said at the end of the visit.