The world recognizes International Holocaust Remembrance Day

'President Obama plans to attend an event at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, where two Americans and two Poles, all non-Jews, will be honored for their work trying to save Jews.'

On November 1, 2005, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 60/7 to make January 27 the International Day of Commemoration in memory of Holocaust victims.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - January 27 is the anniversary of the liberation of the notorious death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, where over one million people were killed.

The devastation left a deep scar, and the Jewish community added the Holocaust to its already long history of persecution.

January 27, 2016, marks the 71st anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation and countries around the world are holding ceremonies and offering special events in remembrance of one of the world's darkest times.

Religion News reported the United States is marking the anniversary with President Barack Obama attending "an event at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, where two Americans and two Poles, all non-Jews, will be honored for their work trying to save Jews. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington is holding two separate events, both of which will be streamed live on the museum's website."

In Canada, the Montreal  Holocaust Memorial Center allows free admission and focuses on what Jewish communities looked like before and after the Holocaust. There is also a "special emphasis" on the "life stories of Montreal survivors."

Germany offers members of its government to join dignitaries at the German Parliament in Berlin for a remembrance event focused on labor while several cities and organizations hold their own ceremonies.

In Israel, Holocaust Remembrance Day is called Yom HaShoah and occurs May fourth, which is the day Israel "formally memorializes Jews who perished in the Holocaust." Countries around the world also take place in ceremonies for Yom HaShoah, including Belgium, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, South Africa, Brazil, Russia, Senegal, Slovakia and the Ivory Coast.

Poland is expected to host an event at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum, which will be streamed live on YouTube. The stream will be offered in both Polish and English.
Austria will hold a ceremony at Linz City Hall, led by The Friends of Yad Vashem and the city of Linz. "Yad Vashem works to preserve the memories and names of murdered Jews."
 
Belgium will be screening a documentary on Helmut Clasen, whose mother was persecuted by Nazis. He was able to hide with his little brother across Germany and Belgium after her death. He passed in Aachen, Germany, October 2015.

In France, Prime Minister Manuel Valls is set to give an address at a commemoration event in Paris organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

"Between the Nazi rise to power in 1933 and Nazi Germany's surrender in 1945, more than 340,000 Jews emigrated from Germany and Austria. Tragically, nearly 100,000 of them found refuge in countries subsequently conquered by Germany. German authorities would deport and kill the vast majority of them. The search for refuge frames both the years before the Holocaust and its aftermath."

The Holocaust was a horrific time in humanity's history, but those who were killed and those who survived all serve as enduring examples of the human spirit. Their stories will never be forgotten.

Future generations will grow to be larger and greater than anything we can imagine, and even then lessons of the Holocaust will remain, teaching humanity their limitations and the significance of the words "never again."

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