UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein
statement ahead of the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the
Victims of the Holocaust, 27 January 2015, Geneva
Seventy years ago on this forever solemn day,
Auschwitz-Birkenau – the largest killing centre of the Nazi concentration camps
– was finally liberated.
We continue to be haunted by the fate of the millions of
Jewish men, women and children, as well as Roma, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war
and other prisoners and deportees from all over Europe, people with
disabilities, homosexuals, and dissidents, who suffered and were killed by this
ghastly extermination machine. The memory of well over a million Jewish
children, and thousands of other children, who were put to death is
particularly unbearable. Both personally and as a representative of the United
Nations, I bow to every woman, man and child who was forced to endure such
terrible suffering.
The Charter of the United Nations – which also commemorates
its 70th anniversary this year – was shaped in response to the atrocities of
the Holocaust and the Second World War. The Charter seeks to establish a new
"vision of what the world should be". It should be a world in which
all people are able to exercise their human rights in freedom, dignity and
equality, in full accordance with international human rights law.
And yet the toxic influences of discrimination and racial
and ethnic hatred can still be felt among us, and the catalogue of atrocities
runs on and on.
Discrimination and hatred kill and wound thousands of
people. They also harm each one of us. They negate the wonderful diversity of
individuals and cultures within our shared membership of humanity, and our
fundamental and universal human rights.
In memory of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, and
the pain that many others have since endured, I believe that it is urgent for
us all to strengthen our moral courage. We must resist discrimination of every
kind so that all may live in liberty, with respect, equality and justice.
ENDS
For more information and media requests, please contact Rupert
Colville (+41 22 917 9767 /rcolville@ohchr.org) or Ravina Shamdasani (+41 22
917 9169 / rshamdasani@ohchr.org)
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