12. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder accidentally extinguished the Eternal Flame in Jerusalem commemorating the victims of the Holocaust
In October 2000, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder embarked on a tour of the Middle East. Included among the stops was the Yad Vashem Memorial to the victims of the Holocaust in Jerusalem. Given the immense sensitivity, even today, regarding German-Jewish relations, his trip was promoted as an important recognition of the past, with Chancellor Schroeder commenting during this visit that “without knowledge of the past there is no way to a future”. After a ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance, a chamber containing the ashes of many victims of the Holocaust in addition to the Eternal Flame, created in 1948 to commemorate the six million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany in the Holocaust, Schröder was invited to increase the size of the flame. Unfortunately, in the dark chamber, the German Chancellor accidentally turned the gas handle the wrong way and instead of enlarging the flame, and symbolically the hopes of the Jewish people, extinguished it.
Despite the efforts of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the flame could not be saved and for the first recorded time went out, if only briefly. A technician employed at the Yad Vashem rushed to the rescue with a cigarette lighter to relight the sacred monument. Lampooned by Western news media as “hopeless”, despite the interventions of Barak in attempt to spare his mortified German guest embarrassment, Israeli media outlets were less conciliatory and attacked Schröder’s insensitivity and incompetence at the monument.