The United Nations adopted a resolution on November 1, 2005, rejecting any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event and condemning “without reserve” all manifestations of violence against persons and communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief. The resolution was passed on January 27, 2006, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp and was declared as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The Holocaust was the systematic state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews and others that the Nazis perceived as “inferior” – Roman gypsies, some of the Slavic peoples like the Russians and Poles, Communists, Socialists, Jehova’s Witnesses, and homosexuals. The Nazis believed that the Germans were “racially superior” and that the other perceived “inferior” people were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community. By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators had killed nearly two out or every three European Jews as part of the so-called Final Solution, the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe.

The Nazi atrocities were countered by acts of courage and kindness during the Holocaust in stories that bear witness to the goodness, love, and compassion of persons who continually risked their lives to protect and save Jewish workers and their families.

In the words of George Santayana, the harshness of this period in world history is a “reminder that the lessons of history are invaluable in determining the course of the future and those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”

To this day, we see a repetition of such violence, discrimination, and violations of human rights in some parts of the world, and similar situations where no spark of concern or act of humility can lighten such actions.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Day compels us to instill the memory of the future generation and help prevent such acts of infirmity to occur again.