Anti-Semitism is a chronic disease that can be felt in New Zealand, the Israeli ambassador says.
Ran Yaakoby, the Ambassador of Israel to New Zealand, was speaking at the opening of the Children's Holocaust Memorial at Te Manawa Museum in Palmerston North last week.
"The only vaccine is education," Yaakoby said.
Between 1939 and 1945, 1.5 million children were murdered by the Nazis. Among them were more than a million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Romani children and children with disabilities.
The New Zealand Children's Holocaust Memorial is a collection of 1.5 million buttons, gathered from all over the world. Each one represents a child who perished.
Yaakoby said trying to comprehend the murder of 1.5 million children is nearly impossible but the buttons help to visualise the loss.