Cuban ruler Fidel Castro will use an official state ceremony to inaugurate Israel's symbol – the seven-branch menorah – in a central Havana square, in memory of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
Attending the event will be Castro's associate, Israeli Minister Rafi Eitan (Pensioners Party).
Eitan said the idea to set up the memorial was suggested by the Havana Mayor, who is renovating the city's old quarter.
The mayor is a professor of history and teaches at the University of Havana. For years, he researched the history of the Jews of Havana, and renovated a series of hotels which were in Jewish ownership. He also renovated the Rachel hotel, which offers its guests Israeli meals.
Eitan has enormous citrus lands in Cuba, amounting to around the size of Gaza.
Castro's door always open
He set up an enormous real estate project in the country, together with an associate, including 18 residential buildings and a commercial shopping center, at around USD 200 million.
Until he became a minister in Israel, Eitan would frequently visit Cuba, where he lived in a beautiful villa, and where he would sculpt in the basement.
Recently, he flew to Cuba to cut off business activities there, as Israeli law demands for members of the government.
A photograph of Fidel Castro hangs in Eitan's office. The two met in 1994, when Eitan received a medal for agricultural investment, and from that time Castro's door has been open to Eitan.
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