UN General Assembly designates Jan. 27 as Holocaust Remembrance Day

The 191-member UN General Assembly decided on Tuesday to designate Jan. 27 as an annual Holocaust Remembrance Day for the 6 million Jews and other victims killed during World War Two.

"The Holocaust also reminds us of the crimes of genocide committed since World War II," Assembly President Jan Eliasson said after the resolution, cosponsored by 104 member states, was adopted without a vote.

"It must, therefore, be a unifying historic warning around which we must rally, not only to recall the grievous crimes committed in human history but also to reaffirm our unfaltering resolve to prevent the recurrence of such crimes," he added.

The resolution rejects any denial of Holocaust as an historical event, urges states to develop educational programs that will instruct future generations about the horrors of genocide, and condemns all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or belief.

It also calls for actively preserving the sites of the Holocaust, including Nazi death camps, concentration camps, forced labor camps, and prisons, and to establish a UN program of outreach and mobilization on Holocaust remembrance and education.

The date of Jan. 27, 1945 is currently officially recognized as a day of remembrance for Holocaust victims in several countries, including the United Kingdom, Italy and Germany, because it marks the day when an advancing Soviet army liberated the largest Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Poland.

Source: Xinhua