‘He Always Cried’: Netanyahu Shares Father-in-Law’s Holocaust Story on Remembrance Day
At a solemn ceremony in the Knesset marking Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid tribute to his late father-in-law, Shmuel Ben-Artzi, and dozens of relatives murdered in the Holocaust.
Speaking during the “Unto Every Person There is a Name” memorial, Netanyahu recounted Ben-Artzi’s decision to immigrate from Poland to Palestine in 1933, despite pleas from his father to stay. “Shmuel was very conflicted,” Netanyahu said. “But in the end, he decided to go.”
Ben-Artzi, originally Shmuel Hahn from Biłgoraj, settled in Bnei Brak, where he became a teacher, Bible scholar, and poet. Netanyahu described him as a pioneering educator who left a deep mark on Israeli society and culture. “He was also a poet,” Netanyahu said, adding that Ben-Artzi received the Ka-Tzetnik Prize for Holocaust literature and sent wages earned in orchard work back to his family in Poland—until all contact ceased after the war began.
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Netanyahu read an excerpt from one of Ben-Artzi’s poems, “To Europe, a poem,” which mourns the destruction of European Jewry and denounces the silence in the face of mass murder:
“They drown my people in blood, and my Lord is silent … Long live genocide.”
He then named nearly 40 relatives from Biłgoraj and Tarnogród who were killed, including Shmuel’s parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, and cousins. “Throughout his entire life, even during the last days before he passed away, whenever I mentioned Yehudit’s name, he would cry,” Netanyahu said, referring to Shmuel’s twin sister.
The prime minister concluded: “May their memory be a blessing. May God avenge their blood.”
