January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day

2025-01-27 09:51:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

January 27th is the World Holocaust Remembrance Day. Germany has been commemorating this day since 1996. In Israel, commemoration began much earlier, on a different day.

In November 2005, the UN General Assembly (Resolution 60/7) declared 27 January as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It stated that "the Holocaust, in which one third of the Jewish people and countless members of other minorities were murdered, will always serve as a warning to all people against the dangers of hatred, intolerance, racism and prejudice". Germany and other countries had previously designated it as a day of remembrance.

On January 27, 2006, the first International Holocaust Remembrance Day, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said: "The unparalleled tragedy of the Holocaust cannot be undone. Its memory must be kept alive with shame and horror, as long as human memory lasts."

Why on January 27th?

On January 27, 1945, the Soviet armed forces, the Red Army, liberated the Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. The soldiers found a few survivors, the ruins of the gas chambers, the dead, and the ashes of the murdered. About 1.1 million people were killed in Auschwitz alone. The majority of them, about 90 percent, were Jews, and Auschwitz was just one of many sites of internment and mass murder by Nazi Germany in Europe.

By the end of World War II in 1945, more than six million Jews, hundreds of thousands of Sinti and Roma, people with disabilities, political opponents, people persecuted as homosexuals, criminals or "asocials", forced laborers, prisoners of war, Jehovah's Witnesses and countless others had lost their lives. Nazi terror was directed against them.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan emphasized: "Remembrance is also a prevention for the future. The hell that arose in the Nazi death camps began with hatred, with prejudice and anti-Semitism. The memory of these origins helps us always keep our eyes open for warning signs."

Preventing future genocides

January 27 is an obligation for all UN member states to remember the men, women and children persecuted and murdered. Resolution 60/7 rejects any form of Holocaust denial. It supports the development of educational programs for Holocaust remembrance and aims to help prevent future genocides.

Based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the resolution condemns all forms of "religious intolerance, incitement to hatred, oppression or violence against individuals or communities on the basis of their ethnic origin or religious belief" anywhere in the world. Commemoration in Israel: Yom HaShoa

In Israel, the main day of remembrance is not January 27th but Yom HaShoa, which usually falls in April. For two minutes, sirens sound across the country, buses, cars, everything stops. People fall silent, remembering the victims.

The term Holocaust used internationally is derived from Greek and means "completely burned." In Israel, it is referred to as shoah, "the catastrophe."

"The Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and Jewish Heroism" was first established in 1951 and was more precisely regulated by law in 1959. This day falls in the month of Nisan of the Jewish calendar. It was designated on the basis of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April 1943. According to Jewish tradition, the day of remembrance begins the evening before. At the memorial ceremonies, six torches are lit, symbolizing the six million Jewish victims. In the morning, other activities follow at the Yad Vashem memorial near Jerusalem.

On Yom HaShoah in Poland, a traditional memorial march is held between the main Auschwitz camp and the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, about three kilometers away, where most of the people were killed. This "March of the Living" is usually attended by thousands of young Jews. During the corona pandemic, there was a virtual commemoration.

Holocaust Remembrance Day in Germany

After the end of World War II and the Allied victory over Hitler's Germany, it took another half a century: only in 1996 did the then German President Roman Herzog declare January 27 a day of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism. Since then, flags on public buildings in Germany have been flown at half-mast on this day. Many schools cover this topic in their lessons.

Since 1996, a memorial hour has been held in the German parliament on Memorial Day for the victims of Nazism. While in the early years the memorial speech was mainly given by German politicians, since this year, many Holocaust survivors and politicians from other countries have spoken about their experiences in front of the members of the German Bundestag in the country of the hands: from Israel, the USA, Poland, France, Spain, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia and the United Kingdom. They have recounted their moving experiences, urging: "Never again! Never again!" In 2022, this call was also made in the plenary hall by the Speaker of the Israeli Parliament, Mickey Levy.

In 2011, a representative of the Sinti and Roma minority spoke for the first time in the German Bundestag. She was Zoni Weisz. In 2017, two relatives of victims of so-called euthanasia, the planned killing of people with serious illnesses or disabilities, spoke for the first time.

In 2023, the focus of the memorial hour was placed for the first time on people who were persecuted during the Nazi regime because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

In 2024, the focus of the commemorations was on intergenerational memory. Eva Szepesi, who was liberated from Auschwitz as a child on January 27, 1945, spoke before the Bundestag./ DW