UN breaks taboo to mark liberation of death camps
The United Nations broke with years of protocol and commemorated the 60-year anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps, directly linking its own founding with the end of the Holocaust, in some of the strongest language ever.
The UN General Assembly marked the anniversary with a special session yesterday, the first in its history dedicated to the Holocaust, and a watershed event for the body.
In comments to the body, secretary general Kofi Annan reversed years of diplomatic silence and directly recognised Jews as the chief victims of the Holocaust, not just one group among many that suffered at the hands of the Nazis.
“An entire civilisation, which had contributed far beyond its numbers to the cultural and intellectual riches of Europe and the world, was uprooted, destroyed, laid waste,” Annan said.
One UN observer said the commemoration could be seen as being linked to Annan’s new efforts to push for Israeli-Palestinian peace with the election of a new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to replace the late Yasser Arafat.
“It’s a transcendent moment,” said Eve Epstein, vice president of National Committee on American Foreign Policy. “People have been optimistic about what’s been happening in the Middle East and I think the secretary general has been doing everything he can to build trust so that the peace process can move forward.”
Between one million and 1.5 million prisoners – most of them Jews – perished in gas chambers or died of starvation and disease at Auschwitz. Overall, six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
The United Nations was created in part because of world leaders’ hope that it could help make sure the Holocaust was never repeated. That fact had largely been ignored for years, until Annan stated the fact starkly.
“The United Nations must never forget that it was created as a response to the evil of Nazism, or that the horror of the Holocaust helped to shape its mission,” he said.
World leaders and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, a Nobel peace prize winner, also wrestled with the question that has long haunted the United Nations: whether its member states have the will to stop future genocide. With mass atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region, the question took on new poignancy.
Wiesel, speaking of himself as the Jewish witness, said he knew it was too late for the victims of the Holocaust, but not for “today’s children, ours and yours”.
“It is for their sake alone that we bear witness,” he said. “It is for their sake that we are duty-bound to denounce anti-Semitism, racism and religious or ethnic hatred.”
In an institution where minor acts are sometimes laden with enormous symbolism, there were plenty of telling signs: Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom was the first national official to speak before the General Assembly. He pointed to the strength of movements denying the Holocaust, asking if there was anything worse than the destruction of an entire race.
“There is something worse: to do all this and then deny, to do all this and then take from the victims and their children and grandchildren the legitimacy of their grief,” he said.
Later, a photography exhibit opened at UN headquarters in New York featuring images from the death camps, the first time an exhibit about the Holocaust was shown at the United Nations.
Just one Middle East country – Jordan – delivered a speech commemorating the liberation, but crucially, Arab leaders did not try to block the commemoration. In 2003, Ireland withdrew a General Assembly resolution condemning anti-Semitism because of Muslim and Arab opposition.
