Is "Never Again" Only a dream???

World marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day

28 Jan 2008

On November 1, 2005, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution designating January 27 as International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.











Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority
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Rejecting any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part, the General Assembly adopted by consensus a resolution (A/RES/60/7) condemning "without reserve" all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief, whenever they occur.

It decided that the United Nations would designate 27 January - the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp - as an annual International Day of Commemoration to honour the victims of the Holocaust, and urged Member States to develop educational programmes to instil the memory of the tragedy in future generations to prevent genocide from occurring again, and requested the United Nations Secretary-General to establish an outreach programme on the "Holocaust and the United Nations", as well as measures to mobilize civil society for Holocaust remembrance and education, in order to help prevent future acts of genocide.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to the Cabinet (27 January): "Today, January 27, the day on which Auschwitz - which is so identified in the world’s consciousness with the Holocaust and the annihilation of the Jews - was liberated, the world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Knesset will hold a special discussion tomorrow. Today is also Israel’s Day to Combat Anti-Semitism. The Government of Israel monitors displays of anti-Semitism around the world and the steps necessary to deal with the phenomenon."
A new Yad Vashem exhibit, BESA: A Code of Honor - Muslim Albanians Who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust, Photographer: Norman Gershman, will be displayed at the United Nations Headquarters for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2008.
Children in the Ghetto

"Children in the Ghetto" is a new website about children, written for children. It portrays life during the Holocaust from the viewpoint of children who lived in the ghetto, while attempting to make the complex experience of life in the ghetto as accessible as possible to today’s children.

Along with the description of the hardships of ghetto life, it also presents the courage, steadfastness and creativity involved in the children’s lives. One of the most important messages to be learned is that despite the hardships, there were those who struggled to maintain humanitarian and philanthropic values, care for one another, and continue a cultural and spiritual life.

At the center of this site is an imaginary representation of a street in the ghetto. The site invites children to “move around the street” and “enter” various locations in it. In each of the locations, original exhibits such as video testimonies, photographs, paintings, artifacts etc. are accompanied by interactive and thought-provoking activities.
The site "Children in the Ghetto" is a result of fruitful cooperation between Snunit - a non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing online education, established by the Hebrew University and the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem. This site was made possible with the support of the Claims Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

International Youth Congress

Yad Vashem has decided to initiate an International Youth Congress as part of the proceedings marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, 2008. This conference, gathering youth leaders from across the globe to meet, converse and make the voice of their generation heard on the subject of shaping Holocaust remembrance and its significance for the future, will be held at Yad Vashem.
The three-day congress will bring together students from all around the world in a joint effort to expand their knowledge on Holocaust-related issues, such as the challenges of preserving the memory of the Holocaust in the 21st century which will ultimately enable them to draft a declaration that will strengthen their commitment to Holocaust remembrance and its implications for future generations.

Remarks by Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni to the International Youth Congress on International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Mr. Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate,H E István Hiller, Hungarian Minister of Education and Culture,H.E. Henri Etoundi Essomba, Ambassador of Cameroon and Dean of the Diplomatic Corps,Distinguished members of the Diplomatic Corps, Ladies and Gentlemen,Dear Youth who are with us here today,

To be a Jew is to dream the Shoah, live the Shoah, and die in the Shoah without actually having been there.
To be a Jew is to try to imagine the horror, to stop as the most painful images engulf you, and to know that you are still so far from the pain endured by those who were there.
To be a Jew is wanting to ask the elderly if they were there, and what they went through, and yet fearing to do so.
To be a Jewish mother is to understand, with the birth of a second child, how impossible, how inhuman it would be to have to choose between her two children.
To be a Jewish mother is to look at your children and wonder if they are old enough to care for themselves without you.
To be a Jewish mother is to look at your children and to ask yourself whether the right choice would be to keep them with you or to tell them to leap off the train.
To be an Israeli is to know that you were reborn from the ashes of the victims and that you have a responsibility to the generations to come.
To be an Israeli child is to try to fathom the number six million but never being able to.
To be an Israeli is to live on streets named after entire communities that were wiped out because there are not enough streets to name after each one of the victims.
To be an Israeli is to live in a country that appears strong from the outside but is always aware of the vulnerability of its people.
To be an Israeli girl is to receive, as a Bat Mitzvah gift, the book of poems "There Are No Butterflies Here", written by children of the Theresiendstadt Ghetto, and to understand that these children were just like you, and all they wanted was to play, to live and to love. To be an Israeli teenager is to visit the death camps in Europe, to see the scratch marks on the walls of the gas chambers of those who tried to get out, to see the "showers", the piles of shoes and hair, and never look in they same way again at things that are taken for granted by teenagers in other places.
To be an Israeli mother is to suddenly discover that you have passed on to your children the collective memory and experience of the Holocaust. It is to understand that although you wanted to spare your children the pain so that they would not have to bear the burden that you have carried all your life, as a daughter of the Jewish people you felt the need to pass on this memory so that they and their children and their children's children would remember. And it is to realize that the national cause has overcome your motherly feeling.
To be a Jewish leader in Israel is to ask yourself whether you would have seen the writing on the wall had you been there, and whether you would have made the right decisions at the time.
And it is, above all, to pledge never to forget.

Dear Friends,

There are feelings and experiences which are failed by words the bigger the horror the more difficult it is to pass on the memory of the Holocaust to future generations.
I would like each of you to study the pictures here at Yad Vashem even if you are unable to pass on the magnitude of what you see, I would like to ask you to take only one memory with you, whether a picture of a living skẻleton, or of a pile of human bones, or that of a child, and to pass this image on.

One picture is a world. Each of these pictures screams out the horrors of the Holocaust and holds lives and dreams that vanished.The terror, humiliation, helplessness, yearning for family, waiting for salvation from those who could do nothing to help - All these you should pass on to others, not to cause them pain, but rather to prevent these images from ever becoming a reality again. As soon as people will cease to think that such crimes are possible, and then they will cease to act to prevent them from returning.
Beyond remembrance of those who died, we are faced with an obligation to the future. This obligation rests on the shoulders of leaders, and on the shoulders of every citizen of the free world.

Horrors of such magnitude are the outset the product of a distorted mind of the leader but they are also the product of the Evil in uniform who agreed to execute, and of society that remained silent.

Anyone who has seen the pictures at Yad Vashem, beginning with people perishing in the Ghettos, understands that the writing was on the wall, and there were those who stood by and photographed.

The obligation to identify, to combat and protest against such phenomena is the responsibility of everyone. Decision makers, teachers and citizens whose ability to voice their protest depends on the understanding that his voice will not die, but will be joined by many others.

As of today, you are all part of the voice which gives substance to the words and the promise of: Never again.