LibGuides: World War II: Legacy and remembrance

"January 27 is designated by the United Nations General Assembly as International Holocaust Remembrance Day (IHRD).

The date marks the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and is meant to honour the victims of Nazism. The same resolution supports the development of educational programs to remember the Holocaust and to prevent further genocide.

Resolution 60/7 not only establishes January 27 as “International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust,” it also rejects any form of Holocaust denial. The resolution encourages member states of the UN to actively preserve sites that the Nazis used during the "Final Solution". Drawing from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the resolution condemns all forms of “religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief” throughout the world."

Source: Holocaust Encyclopaedia, US Holocaust Memorial Museum

The Holocaust was carried out at such a scale that the world took time to come to grips with the enormity of it. But, incomprehensibly, the Holocaust was not the last atrocity of its nature to be committed. This programme outlines more recent attempts at genocide and takes students through the significance of coping with and commemorating the Holocaust many decades on, and long into the future.

Holocaust survivor Roman Kent shares his story of a dog in Nazi-occupied Poland who taught him a timeless lesson: that love is stronger than hate.

Never shall I forget
‘Never Shall I Forget’ by Elie Wiesel is a harrowing passage recounting the first night he spent at Birkenau from Wiesel’s famous memoir Night.

In the Jewish Holocaust Museum's Eyewitness project, the survivors’ stories enable viewers to engage with the human side of Holocaust history to deliver a meaningful learning experience.

Combating Holocaust denial

Holocaust denial timeline
This timeline lists some key events in the evolution of Holocaust denial.
Origins of Holocaust denial
Nazi policy did a great deal to facilitate denial of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a state secret in Nazi Germany. The Germans wrote down as little as possible.
Evidence of the Holocaust presented at Nuremberg
The Holocaust is the best documented case of genocide. During the trials held in Nuremberg after the war, Allied prosecutors submitted thousands of German documents proving that the Nazi regime had carried out the systematic persecution and destruction of the Jewish people. This evidence included numerous photographs and films created by Nazi Germans. It also included eyewitness accounts by survivors and perpetrators.
Holocaust deniers and public disinformation
Holocaust denial and minimization or distortion of the facts of the Holocaust is a form of antisemitism.

The Empty Library is a monument in Berlin dedicated to remembrance of the 10 May 1933 book burnings, where student groups sympathetic to the Nazi cause burned books deemed un-German - typically those by Jewish authors such as Bertolt Brecht and Albert Einstein. The memorial was unveiled in 1995 and designed by Micha Ullmann.

Source: Wikimedia Commons [Public Domain].

The Holocaust has come to be understood and remembered as the greatest act of brutality and genocide in modern memory. However, this was not the immediate understanding of the event following liberation and the end of the Second World War. Memory of the Holocaust has developed differently in different countries at different times.