World community remembers victims of Holocaust

New York, January 28: In memory of millions of innocent Jews who were killed in concentration camps in Nazi Germany during the World War II the world community observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day every year on January 27.

This day is also associated with liberation of the largest Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Russian troops 69 years ago.

This camp was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by the Nazis during World War II.

The gas chambers of Birkenau were blown up by the SS in an attempt to hide the German crimes from the advancing Soviet troops. The SS command sent orders on January 17, 1945 calling for the execution of all prisoners remaining in the camp, but in the chaos of the Nazi retreat the order was never carried out. On January 17, 1945, Nazi personnel started to evacuate the facility.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was observed on January 27, 2014, is an international memorial day for the victims of the genocide of six million European Jews as well as millions of others by the Nazi regime. The day was designated by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution on November 1, 2005. 

The Resolution establishing January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day urges every member nation of the U.N. to honor the memory of Holocaust victims, and encourages the development of educational programs about Holocaust history to help prevent future acts of genocide. It rejects any denial of the Holocaust as an event and condemns all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief.

US President Barack Obama said in his message on this day:"Each year on this day the world comes together to commemorate a barbaric crime unique in human history." "We recall six million Jews and millions of other innocent victims who were murdered in Nazi death camps. We mourn lives cut short and communities torn apart."

Praising those who liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp inmates the US President said, "The noble acts of courage performed by liberators, rescuers, and the Righteous Among Nations remind us that we are never powerless."  "In our lives, we always have choices. In our time, this means choosing to confront bigotry and hatred in all of its forms, especially anti-Semitism."

Obama also said people should condemn "any attempts to deny the occurrence of the Holocaust," and "doing our part to ensure that survivors receive some measure of justice and the support they need to live out their lives in dignity."

AT the UN Jews from around New York, a dwindling number of Holocaust survivors, occasional celebrities, and precious few friends, file into the General Assembly Hall and grant the U.N. the privilege of appearing to care. This year the Day was the scarcity of express emphasis on Israel, save for the remarks of the Israeli ambassador.  Despite the fact that the U.N. was erected on the ashes of the Jewish people, the General Assembly has never adopted a resolution dedicated specifically to anti-semitism.

In the German Parliament the Russian Holocaust survivor made keynote speech in International Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony. Russian author Daniil Granin, 95, who was transported to Auschwitz in 1944 after surviving the Nazi siege of what was then Leningrad, was the keynote speaker in the Bundestag.

Observances in parliament are already underway, with German President Joachim Gauck leading the country's lawmakers in a moment of silence to honor the victims of Nazism.

Monday's commemorations for International Holocaust Remembrance Day came 69 years after Soviet soldiers swept into former death camp Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland to liberate about 7,000 surviving inmates. "We honor every one of those brutally murdered in the darkest period of European history," said EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton.

"It is an occasion to remind us all of the need to continue fighting prejudice and racism in our own time."

Separately, more than 60 Israeli lawmakers - over half the members of the Knesset - are set to join Holocaust survivors at Auschwitz to honor more than 1 million people who died there during World War II. "The symbolism could not be any more striking - mere meters away from the gas chambers where millions of Jews were once murdered, will meet the representatives of the parliament of the Jewish State of Israel," said Jonny Daniels, executive director of From the Depths, the Jewish non-governmental organization spearheading the initiative.