Ambassadors of Israel and Germany say denying the Holocaust threatens peaceful coexistence worldwide. Their appeal comes 80 years after the Wannsee Conference, where Nazis discussed the extermination of Europe’s Jews. The UN General Assembly on Thursday adopted a resolution rejecting and condemning any denial of the Holocaust, proposed by Israeli and German ambassadors. The 193-member assembly agreed on the proposal without a vote — with only Iran distancing itself from the text. The assembly also urged social media companies to “take active measures” to fight antisemitism online. “The General Assembly is sending a strong and unambiguous message against the denial or the distortion of these historical facts,” said German UN Ambassador Antje Leendertse. “Ignoring historical facts increases the risk that they will be repeated.”
Susanne Wasum-Rainer, the German ambassador to Israel, and Jeremy Issacharaoff, the Israeli ambassador to Germany, published a joint appeal ahead of the meeting in New York. “This resolution is meant to be a sign of hope and inspiration for all states and societies that stand up for diversity and tolerance, strive for reconciliation and understand that remembering the Holocaust is essential to prevent such crimes from happening again,” the two diplomats wrote. The German Tagesspiegel and the Israeli Maariv newspaper published their appeal. The two ambassadors said Holocaust denial was an attack on victims and their descendants, Jewish people and on “the basic condition of peaceful societies and peaceful coexistence worldwide.”
via dw: UN General Assembly adopts German-Israeli proposal against Holocaust denial
siehe auch: UN General Assembly approves resolution condemning Holocaust denial. The United Nation’s General Assembly adopted on Thursday, by consensus, a resolution that condemns denial and distortion of the Holocaust. The resolution was approved in the presence of a group of people who survived the Nazi genocide that killed around six million Jews, some two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe, during World War Two. The vote comes on the same day, 80 years ago, during the Wansee Conference, when top Nazi officials discussed and coordinated the genocide of the Jewish people, establishing the system of Nazi death camps. Introducing the resolution, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, himself a grandson of Holocaust victims, Gilad Erdan, said the world lives “in an era in which fiction is now becoming fact, and the Holocaust is becoming a distant memory.”
“Holocaust denial has spread like a cancer, it has spread under our watch”,he warned. According to the resolution, this genocide “will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice.” In the text, Member States express concern about “the growing prevalence of Holocaust denial or distortion through the use of information and communications technologies.” It also urges all Member States to “reject without any reservation any denial or distortion of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part, or any activities to this end.”