Child survivors at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland in 1945
The United Nations adopted a resolution aimed at combating Holocaust denial of the Jews during World War II, or what is known for short as the Holocaust.
The resolution urges member states and social media companies to help combat anti-Semitism.
The resolution, submitted by Israel and Germany, was approved without a vote in the 193-member General Assembly.
The United Nations said the move sent “a strong message… against the denial or distortion of these historical facts”.
Six million Jews died in the Holocaust, a campaign by Nazi Germany to eradicate the Jewish population of Europe.
On Thursday, the United Nations General Assembly said that it “rejects and condemns without reservation any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, in whole or in part.”
“Ignoring historical facts increases the risk of their repetition,” said Germany’s ambassador to the United Nations, Entei Lindertsee.
The text praises countries that maintain sites that were formerly used as Nazi death and concentration camps and urges member states to provide educational programs about the Holocaust.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Barbock and her Israeli counterpart, Yair Lapid, said in a joint statement that they are concerned about the recent surge in Holocaust denial.
The resolution describes the distortion or denial of the Holocaust as follows:
- Deliberate efforts to justify or minimize the impact of the Holocaust or its principal components, including collaborators with Nazi Germany and its allies
- The overall reduction in the number of victims of the Holocaust, contrary to reliable sources
- Attempts to blame the Jews for the genocide that targeted them
- Statements describing the Holocaust as a positive historical event
- Attempts to obliterate responsibility for the establishment of the concentration and death camps created and administered by Nazi Germany by blaming other nations or ethnic groups
While the resolution was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, Iran – a member of the organization – said it was distancing itself from the text.
As soon as the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Nazis began to strip the Jews of all their property, freedoms, and rights under the law.
By 1939 they began deporting Jews to newly conquered Poland, and in 1941 Nazi forces were ordered to systematically kill European Jews.