IDF Radio confirms that Israeli Embassy staff in Egypt are returning home due to security concerns.

It’s not known if Israel’s ambassador will be returning in the near future.

Dan Gillerman, former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, spoke at a women’s Zionist conference event Tuesday and told the audience that Barack Obama was a weak President that has forced Israel to “keep apologizing for itself all the time.”

“We shouldn’t have to be on the defensive,” said Gillerman, who also emphasized that the tumult sweeping the Middle East required a change in US leadership to a stronger president.

Israeli ambassador to Egypt, Yaakov Amitai, left Egypt on Thursday, reportedly in anticipation of the first anniversary of the January 25 Revolution that led to the ouster of longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak.

The Israeli government fears that the anniversary may be used by Egyptian demonstrators to incite violence against the Israeli embassy in Cairo.

Demonstrators stormed the embassy in September 2011, causing no injuries but leaving Israeli diplomats unsettled and insecure.

Sources told the Egyptian Ahram Online that Amitai would probably return to Cairo in late January if the anniversary passes without incident.

     A few-hundred Kracovians and guests from abroad, including Israel, participated in the annual March of Remembrance. Ghetto survivors, representatives of local authorities, diplomats (including Ann Hall, U.S. Consul General in Krakow and David Peleg, Israeli Ambassador in Poland) and many “ordinary people” came to commemorate those who were killed in the ghetto during WW II. We walked from the former Umschlagplatz in Podgorze to the site of former KL Plaszow.

Israeli Ambassador, David Peleg, at the remnants of the ghetto walls.

    The March of Remembrance was inaugurated in early 80s by a group of people who later founded the Jewish Culture Festival Society. It was a very small, semi-private way of commemorating forgotten victims of the Krakow Ghetto. Throughout the years the march kept growing and became Krakow’s central event commemorating the Holocaust.

Rabbi Edgar Gluck recites Kaddish at the monument for murdered Jews.

   Among those who participated in the march this year were Jew and non-Jews, survivors and their neighbors, people of different professions, ages and backgrounds. In recent years, there are more and more visitors from Israel coming especially to the March of Remembrance. In many cases this is the first time they have returned to their former homeland since the Shoah. Quite a few came with members of their families and friends.

Representatives of local authorities and Rabbi Edgar Gluck

   For those who have been involved in the organization of the march from the very beginning, there is one very important element. Although it has become an official event, the march has not lost its spontaneous character and is first of all a manifestation of feelings of each individual attending the March of Remembrance.

The monument at the Plaszow concentration camp in Krakow

  Correction – Last week the caption on two of the pictures in this column were inadvertently switched, Rabbi Michael Schudrich was seen reading the Megillahin Warsaw and Rabbi Gluck was seen with a member of his congregation in Krakow after reading the Megillah.

  Correction – Last week the caption on two of the pictures in this column were inadvertently switched, Rabbi Michael Schudrich was seen reading the Megillahin Warsaw and Rabbi Gluck was seen with a member of his congregation in Krakow after reading the Megillah.