International Holocaust Remembrance Day Marked by Ceremony in Minsk

International Holocaust Remembrance Day was marked by a ceremony at a hall in downtown Minsk on January 27.

The event had been organized by the UN Office in Belarus and the Holocaust foundation of the Union of Belarusian Jewish Public Associations and Communities.

Speaking at the ceremony, Viktar Radzivinowski, a departmental chief at the UN office, said that the “shocking aftermath of World War II became a precondition for the establishment of the UN, which is underlain by respect for and protection of all people’s rights irrespective of sex, race and faith.”

He stressed that the UN sought to fight intolerance, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and other forms of racism. Mr. Radzivinowski also read out a statement by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Inna Herasimava, chairwoman of the Holocaust foundation, expressed gratitude to the education ministry and the office of the commissioner on religious and ethnic affairs at the Council of Ministers for supporting the cause of distributing true information about Holocaust among younger generations.

Mikhail Treyster, chairman of an association of former ghetto and Nazi death camp prisoners, said that there were a total of 500 Holocaust massacre sites in Belarus and many of them remained unmarked. He called for erecting more Holocaust memorials and opposing neo-Nazism in Belarus.

Six candles in memory of the six million Holocaust victims were lit and the gathering held a minute of silence.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day has been marked after an appropriate resolution by the UN General Assembly adopted on November 1, 2005. January 27 is the date when soldiers of the Soviet army liberated the survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.

A total of six million Jews, or 60 percent of Europe’s Jewish population at that time, are believed to have been slain by Nazis.

More than 800,000 people were executed in 260 Jewish ghettos across Belarus. Over 100,000 Jews were kept at the ghetto in Minsk, one of the largest in Europe.