An eccentric Manhattan billionaire is paying for half of Israel’s parliament, as well many of the last survivors of the Holocaust, to visit Auschwitz on Monday for a day of remembrance.
Stewart Rahr bills himself as the “King of Fun” but is serious about this trip. He has paid more than $600,000 for two charter 737 planes to fly 64 Knesset members and 30 death-camp survivors from Tel Aviv to the concentration camp where Nazis killed 1 million Jews.
He has also arranged for Italian singing star Andrea Bocelli to perform.
Rahr said he found out about the event from Israel “Yummy” Schachter, a Toronto entrepreneur.
“This event will be the most uplifting and emotional remembrance ceremony in Jewish history, a once-in-a-lifetime event,” Rahr said.
Co-organizer Jonny Daniels said: “We are getting very close to the point where there will be no more firsthand accounts left. The onus falls on us . . . to understand what happened and to ensure it never repeats again.”
The ceremony will take place 69 years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a center of Hitler’s genocidal Final Solution, on Jan. 27, 1945, a date now marked as International Remembrance Day.
The gathering is expected to evoke strong emotions as legislators lock arms with survivors for a tour of the killing grounds. The 64 representatives make up more than half the 120-member Knesset, which rarely holds sessions outside Israel.
“If you want to visit your relatives, you go to Tel Aviv or New York,” said survivor David Frankel, a 77-year-old retired judge from Jerusalem who will be there for his fifth trip to the camp. “The only place I can visit is Auschwitz. I am going to unite with the memories of my relatives,” he told The Media Line news agency.
“They have no grave. I will say kaddish [the Jewish prayer of mourning] for them there.”
Issawi Frej, one of 12 Arab legislators in the Knesset, said he failed to convince the other 11 to join him for the trip.
“I think they are making a mistake,” he told The Media Line. “This is not a Jewish issue. It is a human issue and affects all of us.”
It’s unclear if any New York survivors are going. Several business leaders, including billionaires Carl Icahn, Michael Milken and Sheldon Adelson, will be on hand. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is expected to attend, along with top government officials from Israel and elected leaders from many nations.