VILNIUS, January 8, BNS–The presidents of Lithuania and Israel on Sunday underlined the importance of preserving the heritage of Lithuanian Jews and of expanding business ties as they marked 25 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

“Everywhere you look, the ties between our two nations get deeper and stronger, the olive and oak, growing as one,” Dalia Grybauskaite and Reuven Rivlin said in a joint statement.

The two presidents underscored the need to ensure the Holocaust never happens again through remembrance and education.

“We have to commemorate the past by honoring the innocent victims and the righteous, by studying the perpetrators and collaborators as well as by building bilateral relations based on friendship and mutual respect,” they said.

Grybauskaite and Rivlin said: “There are numerous areas in which the relations between Lithuania and Israel are already quite strong and many more spheres in which the partnership could and will be expanded.”

“Both countries are successfully developing high technologies. Lithuania is the global leader in laser technologies and communications, and Israel is the frontrunner in research and innovation. Our countries exchange experience in medicine, share methods of education and reveal their cultural treasures, cooperate in the fields of defense and security and look for opportunities to export and import from each other,” the presidents said.

“In the halls of the United Nations, Lithuania strongly supported Israel while in turn Israel has aided Lithuania in its goal to join the OECD. Everywhere you look, the ties between our two nations get deeper and stronger, the olive and oak, growing as one,” they said in the statement.