International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed on 27 January each year. This date marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp, by Soviet troops in 1945. The United Nations General Assembly designated 27 January as International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2005.
The Holocaust was a genocide during World War II in which Nazi Germany, aided by its collaborators, systematically murdered some six million European Jews, around two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe, between 1941 and 1945. Jews were targeted for extermination as part of a larger event involving the persecution and murder of other groups, including in particular the Roma and “incurably sick”, as well as ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Soviet citizens, Soviet prisoners of war, political opponents, gay men and Jehovah’s Witnesses, resulting in up to 17 million deaths overall.
The Holocaust was a crime against humanity and a crime against the Jewish people. It is important to remember and learn from the Holocaust so that such a tragedy never happens again.