The United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday unanimoulsy adopted a resolution to declare January 27th as the new annual international international
Holocaust remembrance day for the 6 million Jews and other victims murdered in the Nazi Holocaust during World War Two. On January 27th, 1945
Ausshwitz-Birkenau, the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, was liberated.
The resolution, first proposed by the United States, Israel, Russia, Australia, and Canada was co-sponsored by nearly 100 nations from every
continent, including eight Muslim countries and several countries in Africa and South America.
In addition to setting a world Holocaust Day, the resolution calls on member nations to develop educational programs, emphasizing both "the duty
to remember" and "the duty to educate" future generations about the mass slaughter.
The resolution rejects any full or partial denial of the Holocaust and condemn "all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment
or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief, wherever they occur."
The approval was expected and no country wanted to object. However, following the approval some countries' representatives expressed their
reservations:
- The Egyptian ambassador said that the resolution should have included other genocide cases,
- China's representative protested against the horrors instigated by Japanese soldiers in World War Two,
- Venezuela's representative protested the dropping of American nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
General Assembly President Jan Eliasson said that the memory of the Holocaust must 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 reserve to prevent the recurrence of such crimes."
and added it is important to remember that the UN was "erected from the ashes of the Second World War," and part of its original mission was to
make sure such an "unspeakable atrocity" as the Holocaust never occurred again
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[edit on 4-11-2005 by asala]
