World Leaders at Launch of Holocaust Museum

A new Holocaust museum, designed to affirm Israel's claim to be the principal keeper and interpreter of survivors' memories, opened in Jerusalem yesterday.

Fifteen presidents and prime ministers, many from the east European nations most affected by the genocide of the Jews, joined survivors at the dedication of the stark prism-shaped concrete structure cutting through the Mount of Remembrance.

Israel's president, Moshe Katsav, said the museum would serve as "an important signpost to all of humankind, a signpost that warns how short the distance is between hatred and murder, between racism and genocide".

The museum at the Yad Vashem memorial puts a new emphasis on preserving the memories of the rapidly diminishing number of living Holocaust survivors.

They tell the stories of survivors and those who died through interviews, art and personal artefacts from the camps and ghettos.

"Our generation is the last generation," said Mr Katsav. "History asks the survivors to do the impossible and to sink into the abyss and to draw out of the deep recesses of their minds the memories of what has happened for the benefit of future generations, for the benefit of mankind."

The exhibition for the first time also acknowledges other victims of the Nazis, such as Gypsies and homosexuals, who were ignored in the old museum, established in 1957.

The Nobel prize laureate and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, told those assembled that the Holocaust was not about man's inhumanity to man, but man's inhumanity to Jews.

Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, said the museum was a testament to the need for Israel to exist.

"There are several chambers in the heart of man. In the national Jewish heart, there is a chamber of memory and it is here at Yad Vashem," he said. "The state of Israel is the only place in the world where Jews have the right and the strength to defend themselves by themselves. It is the only guarantee that the Jewish people will never again know a Holocaust. It is our historic commitment to the Jewish people."

Representatives from some 40 countries attended the ceremony, including Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general.