Monument to Menachem Begin to be unveiled in Brest
BREST, 30 October (BelTA) – The 100th anniversary of Menachem Begin, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, the seventh Prime Minister of Israel, will be celebrated in his hometown of Brest, BelTA learnt from the Israeli Embassy in Belarus.
The celebrations will feature a ceremony to unveil the monument to the outstanding Israeli politician and statesman on 31 October. Attending the ceremony will be representatives of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, local authorities, Jewish organizations, Israeli diplomats, and sponsors of the project. Herzl Makov, the Head of the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, will arrive in Brest to attend the ceremony. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Israel to Belarus Yosef Shagal will read out a welcome letter from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The erection of the monument to Menachem Begin in his homeland is an unprecedented event,” the embassy said. This is the first monument to an Israeli politician in a post-Soviet country. The monument has been built in the Brest historic downtown near the house that used to be the school which Menachem Begin attended. The monument was created by a group headed by architect Leonid Levin, winner of the Lenin Prize, President of the Union of Belarusian Jewish Associations and Communities (UBJAC).
The celebrations will also feature a presentation and the First-Day-of-Issue dedication ceremony for the souvenir stamps “National Leaders of Israel Born in Belarus”. The set of souvenir stamps were prepared by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of Belarus on the initiative of the Israeli Embassy. They are dedicated to the outstanding Israeli politicians who were born in Belarus: Chaim Weizmann, Zalman Shazar, Yitzhak Shamir, Menachem Begin, and Shimon Peres.
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