On this day: New Yad Vashem opens

Dignitaries and statesmen from 40 countries visited Israel for the official opening ceremony of the refurbished Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. The UN general secretary Kofi Annan spoke, as did the German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Holocaust survivor and human rights campaigner Elie Wiesel. Also in attendance was former Archbishop of Paris, Jean-Marie Lustiger, a Holocaust survivor who converted to Catholcism during the war after his mother was killed by the Nazis.

Israel’s then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon also addressed the crowd in the hills above Jerusalem, using the opportunity to remind world leaders of Israel’s importance to the Jewish people.

He said: “Israel is the only place in the world where the Jews have the right and the power to protect themselves by themselves. This is the only guarantee that the Jewish people will never know another Holocaust."

The museum, which cost £30 million to redesign over a ten-year period, first opened in 1953 as Israel’s official memorial. Designed by award-winning Israeli-American architect Moshe Safdie, the new Yad Vahsem was built four times larger than its predecessor.