30 April 2007
Israel’s Holocaust memorial institution, Yad Vashem, has urged the United Nations to stop the genocide in Darfur. "It is not sufficient for the international community to issue condemnations, and statements via the United Nations, while this Khartoum-sponsored genocide is taking place," Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev and the head of its institution’s council, the Shoah survivor Yosef Lapid, wrote in an open letter to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.
"Concrete steps must be taken; we must do everything to ensure that the Security Council will decide to send troops to Darfur who will be able to restore security. Every day that passes adds thousands of names to the list of dead…As the heads of the Jewish people’s central organization for commemorating the Holocaust – a genocide that took place while the world was silent – we feel a special obligation, as we discussed with you during your recent visit to Yad Vashem, to raise the alarm on Darfur," Lapid and Shalev wrote. Last month, refugees from Sudan visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.