Rabbi Lau elected Yad Vashem Council chairman

Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, former chief rabbi and a Holocaust survivor, was elected to replace Yossef (Tommy) Lapid as the chairman of the Yad Vahsem Holocaust Memorial Museum Council. The cabinet approved Lau's appointment in its weekly meeting on Sunday.

Lau was a young child when World War Two broke out. He was born in 1937 in the Polish town of Piotrków Trybunalski to a family of known rabbis. He survived the Holocaust with his older brother Naftali.

When they were freed from the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945 Lau was the youngest prisoner there – eight years of age.

After the war Lau and his brother came to Israel (then Palestine). He was ordained as a rabbi in 1971, and served in various prominent positions, most notably as Israel's chief rabbi and chief rabbi of the city of Te Aviv.

In 2005 Lau was warded the Israel Prize for his life's work in honor of his special contribution to Israeli society and the State of Israel.

'A man of great stature'

Rabbi Lau said he was grateful to the cabinet for the appointment. "The timing of the announcement is particularly meaningful, because it takes place on the same week that we commemorate 70 years since the first violent outbreak that marked the start of the Holocaust – the bloody events of Kristallnacht.

"My life's history is embedded in the walls of Yad Vashem and in the numerous documents and displays at the museum. I have had the privilege to assist Yad Vashem in Israel and the Diaspora for many years, and have the highest esteem for the directors who came before me," he added.

Yad Vashem Directorate Chairman Avner Shalev welcomed Lau's appointment. "He is a man of great stature whom I have known personally for many years. The issue of the Holocaust is close to Rabbi Lau's heart and he considers the perpetuation of the memory of the Shoah a Jewish and universal value. Rabbi Lau has strong ties with Yad Vashem and he has done a lot for the commemoration of the Holocaust."