Holocaust Day/United Nations Observes

Independent Films, Web Series

The UN observed Holocaust Day two weeks later due to an earlier snow storm. Commemorating the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says "let us remember: the United Nations was created, in part, to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again. As United Nations Secretary-General, I never forget this fundamental mission.

Transcripts / Production notes / Scripts

The United Nations (UN) held a special ceremony today in New York to pay homage to the six million Jews and countless others slaughtered in the Nazi death camps of the Second World War, stressing that the drive to prevent a repetition of such horror was one of the reasons the Organization was founded.

The ceremony, originally scheduled for 27 January on the annual Holocaust Memorial Day, was delayed by a heavy snow storm in New York.

After observing a moment of silence for the victims of the Holocaust, Joseph Deiss the President of the 65th General Assembly told delegates, Holocaust survivors and others that the forces of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice are “still at work around the world.”

He emphasized that a culture of peace as well as tolerance and respect must be fostered adding that the laws put in place by the UN to protect people must be upheld.

This year’s theme paid special tribute to the suffering of women. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon highlighted the role played by mothers and daughters, grandmothers, sisters and aunts.

"As we honour the women of the Holocaust, let us pledge to create a world where women and girls can live in peace, free of fear and with all the opportunities and freedom that are their inalienable right,” Ban said.

Among the guests at the commemoration, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak, whose grandparents, Elka and Shmuel Godin, died in the Treblinka camp in Poland.

Barak spoke of remembering two lessons: first, ‘the Holocaust – never again.’ and second –an independent, strong, thriving and peaceful State of Israel is the vengeance of the dead.”

Lenore Weitzman, professor emeritus at George Mason University, is currently completing work on a book about the young women who served as secret underground “couriers” for Jewish resistance movements in the ghettos.

She said that although “we shudder” at today’s genocides, one should think about how much worse they could have been, “how much longer they could have continued had these events been ignored with the silence of the international community during the holocaust.”

Beyond the millions of Jews killed, hundreds of thousands of others, including Roma, Slavs, disabled people, homosexuals, Jehovah’s witnesses, communists and other political dissidents are estimated to have perished in the camps.

The General Assembly in 2005 designated 27 January, the date of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, the largest and most notorious of all of the concentration camps, as the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.

Tags

• Holocaust
• united nations
• Never Again

Directors:

• Muhamed Sacirbey, UNTV

Producers:

• Susan Sacirbey