UNGA must pass Holocaust denial rejection resolution: Israel’s hopes high ahead of vote
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Roshan Amiri
- . January 20, 2022
- . Update: January 21, 2022 2:10 pm
Israel– The 193 member United Nations General Assembly is voting on Thursday to pass a resolution that will condemn and reject any denial of Holocaust. Israel is hoping that resolution will pass, which is also backed by Germany, that will urge countries and social medias “to take active measures to combat antisemitism and Holocaust denial or distortion.”
“We hope it is going to be adopted in a consensus,” Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan said during talks with reporters on Wednesday. “If we want this body, the U.N., to succeed in preventing genocide we must remember what happened in the past and this is the goal of tomorrow’s decision.” He added that this resolution needs to be passed to bring the truth to forefront and accept it. This is especially needed as majority of Holocaust survivors are not present now and social media is now common in dangerously distorting and even denying the Holocaust.
The vote, that is scheduled for January 20, has a significance because of the date chosen. It marks the 80th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference that was held at a villa located on the shores of Berlin’s Wannsee Lake in 1942. This was during World War II where Nazi leaders met to coordinate plans for the so-called “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Result of these coordinated meetings was that innumerable death camps were established by Nazis, killing of over six million Jews. This had wiped out almost one – third of Jewish population at that time.
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The draft resolution applauds countries that have preserved Nazi death camps and other Holocaust sites and urges the 193 members of U.N. General Assembly “to develop educational programs that will inculcate future generations with the lessons of the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide.” The resolution further requests the U.N. and its agencies to continue to develop and implement programs that are aimed at defying Holocaust denial and distortions, and activate civil society to provide right facts about the Holocaust.
The draft says Holocaust denial “refers to discourse and propaganda that deny the historical reality and the extent of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices during World War II” and “any attempt to claim that the Holocaust did not take place or call into doubt that gas chambers, mass shooting, starvation, and intentional genocide were used against the Jewish people.”
