Holocaust remembrance: a resolution unfolds--the world remembers.

The sixtieth session of the General Assembly saw the unanimous backing of a resolution that marks 27 January--the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp--as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

It was in the spring of 2005 when Israel laid the foundation of its first-ever draft text before the Assembly. "We had thought of it [resolution] for sometime, but put it in practice for Member States in 2005", Daniel Carmon, Deputy Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations, told the UN Chronicle.

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The resolution also comes at a time when the world marks the sixtieth year of the establishment of the United Nations and the end of the Holocaust tragedy, which resulted in the annihilation of 6 million European Jews by the Nazi regime. The essence of the text lies in its "two-fold approach", Ambassador Carmon added: one that deals with the memory and remembrance of those who were massacred during the Holocaust, and the other with educating future generations of its horrors.

After its initial drafting, the text was then negotiated over private deliberations with certain Member States, "who were the initiators of the special session in January and were also the liberators of Nazi camps in the Second World War", Mr. Carmon said. With some linguistic tweaking and a strong endorsement from the United States, Canada, Australia, the Russian Federation and the European Union, the text embarked as a new agenda item in the General Assembly.

Even though a strong support from 104 sponsors implied that the resolution would glide through, Mr. Carmon said that many had concerns whether the rest of the delegations would join hands on this issue. The idea was to encompass all Member States in this endeavour, and many were skeptical of its outcome, given that "the story of Israel and the United Nations" as "very complex", he said.

However, initial fears turned to optimism when on 1 November 2005 the General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution to mark the memory of the Holocaust victims. The adoption came effortlessly as many delegates upheld the general thrust of the draft. Yet, with the debate stretching over two days and had delegations expressing support for the historic text, there were calls for its scope to be expanded beyond the specific events surrounding the Holocaust--to incorporate not only the lessons of that tragedy but also other war crimes, acts of genocide or ethnic cleansing, which had been witnessed in the Balkans and Rwanda.

Maged Abdelfattah Abdelaziz, Permanent Representative of Egypt, said that he had reservations about operative paragraphs 2 and 6 of the text, as well as on some other aspects of its adoption. Egypt had no objection to designate 27 January as Holocaust remembrance day; however, the resolution failed to recognize the racist and other causes that led to the Holocaust, he said. He also wanted to know why crimes against Christians and Muslims in Kosovo, Srebrenica and elsewhere were not similarly recognized and remembered. Muhammad Anshor of Indonesia said his delegation went along with the resolution's adoption, with the understanding that while the Holocaust should not be forgotten, it was not the only human tragedy to offer such a lesson.

"While the Holocaust was a unique tragedy for the Jewish people, its lessons are universal", Dan Gillerman, Permanent Representative of Israel, said. "The Holocaust was carried out at the height of the rational age and it represents a watershed in human history", he added. "While Jews might be the first victims of anti-Semitism, they are rarely the last."

The resolution rejects any denial of Holocaust as an historical event, urges States to develop educational programmes that will instruct future generations about the horrors of genocide, and condemns all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief. It also calls for actively preserving the Holocaust sites that served as Nazi death camps, concentration camps, forced labour camps and prisons, as well as for establishing a UN programme of outreach and mobilization of civil society for Holocaust remembrance and education.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a statement welcomed the resolution and called the International Day of Commemoration to honour the Holocaust victims an important reminder of the universal lessons of that terrible tragedy--"a unique evil which cannot simply be consigned to the past and forgotten". Wrapping up the discussion, General Assembly President Jan Eliasson of Sweden said the Holocaust had been a turning point in history, which had prompted the world to say "never again". The significance of the resolution was that it called for a remembrance of past crimes, with an eye towards preventing them in the future.