Today is the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. On November 1, 2005, UN General Assembly Resolution 60/7 officially designated January 27, the date on which Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army in 1945, as a day of remembrance to be observed worldwide. (Resolution 60/7 was the first resolution presented by Israel ever to be adopted by the UNGA.)
For more on the Holocaust, see the web sites of Yad Vashem and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, along with these posts:
- If This Is a Man (on the poem of the same title by Primo Levi).
For those in the area who might be interested, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Institute on Law, Religion, and Ethics at the Pepperdine University School of Law will co-sponsor a conference on Genocide and Religion next month (February 11-13). Details are available here.