Kofi Annan
צילום: רויטרס
UN to Mark Liberation of Nazi Camps
Monday's event will be attended by Holocaust survivors and foreign ministers of Israel and Germany
UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations will mark Monday for the first time in its history the liberation of Nazi death camps during World War II in an event to be attended by Holocaust survivors and the foreign ministers of Israel and Germany.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, described the commemoration as “one of the most solemn and historic occasions at the General Assembly.”
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, along with fellow Holocaust survivor and writer Jorge Semprun, will attend the UN General Assembly’s special session that was backed by the nearly 150 of the world body’s 191 members.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and his Israeli counterpart, Silvan Shalom, will address the UN General Assembly for the 60th anniversary of the camps’ liberation.
The UN event will come three days before a state ceremony in Poland at the site of the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, where more than one million people — most of them Jews — perished before Soviet forces liberated it on January 27, 1945.
Six million Jews died in the Holocaust.
Coming 30 years after the world body adopted a resolution branding Zionism a “form of racism” — a move that soured UN-Israel relations — the UN’s special session represents a significant event, a Western diplomat said.
Gillerman, who has often clashed with the United Nations over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said the organization’s decision to hold the event could be linked to an evolving world.
“Maybe we are at a point in history where the changes in the world are reflecting on the United Nations. We do live in a changing world, in a world which hopefully presents us today with a unique window of opportunity to make peace in our region,” he said.
“Maybe that atmosphere has made it possible for 148 countries, including many countries who normally may not have supported such an initiative, to come aboard and we are very gratified that this is happening,” Gillerman said.
The session approved by UN members was sponsored by the United States, Israel, the European Union, Russia, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan this week said new generations must not forget the lessons of the Holocaust.
“The founding of this organization was a direct response to the Holocaust. Our Charter, and the words ‘untold sorrow,’ were written as the world was learning the full horror of the death camps,” Annan said.
“The evil that destroyed six million Jews, and others, in those camps is one that still threatens all of us today,” he said.
“It is not something we can consign to the distant past, and forget about it. Every generation must be on its guard, to make sure that such a thing never happens again,” Annan added.
Annan said the special session should be seen as “an expression of our commitment to build a United Nations that can respond quickly and effectively to genocide and other serious violations of human rights.”
“Of course, that work is still far from complete.”
The UN was criticized for its response to the Rwandan genocide in 1994 in which at least 800,000 people were killed.
A decade later, the organization will hear next week from a special commission sent to Sudan’s war-torn western Darfur region to determine whether acts of genocide have been committed there.
