UN- INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY

Not an official document.
For information only.
December 2005

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27th January.

On 1 November 2005, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 60/7 designating 27 January as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

Following the adoption of the resolution, the Secretary General of the United Nations characterized this special day as “an important reminder of the universal lessons of the Holocaust, a unique evil which cannot simply be consigned to the past and forgotten”.

The horrors of World War II sparked the creation of the United Nations. Human rights for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion is one of the fundamental mandates recorded in its Charter. At the inauguration of the Holocaust History Museum at Yad Vashem (Israel) in March 2005, Secretary-General Kofi Annan recalled that “worldwide revulsion at the genocide -- at the systematic murder of six million Jews and millions of others -- was also a driving force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. The Secretary-General added that “the United Nations
has a sacred responsibility to combat hatred and intolerance. A United Nations that fails to be at the forefront of the fight against anti-Semitism and other forms of racism denies its history and undermines its future”.

27 January was chosen to be International Holocaust Remembrance Day as it marks the day on which the largest Nazi death camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau (Poland) was liberated by the Soviet army in 1945. Several countries already observe this day to remember Holocaust victims.


For more information, please visit:

http://cyberschoolbus.un.org/discrim/race_b_ht_print.asp
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2005/ga10413.doc.htm
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2005/sgsm9762.doc.htm
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2005/sgsm9689.doc.htm
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/sgsm9375.doc.htm
http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2005/webArticles/un_seminars.html

This fact sheet has been issued by the Public Inquiries Unit,
Department of Public Information, United Nations.
Tel.: 212-963-4475; Fax: 212-963-0071; E-mail: inquiries@un.org
Website: http://www.un.org/geninfo/faq