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| Sunday, 23 January 2005 |
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UN session to mark Nazi death camps liberation UNITED NATIONS, Saturday (AFP) The United Nations will mark Monday for the first time in its history the liberation of Nazi death camps during World War II in an event to be attended by Holocaust survivors and the foreign ministers of Israel and Germany. Israel's ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, described the commemoration as "one of the most solemn and historic occasions at the General Assembly." Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, along with fellow Holocaust survivor and writer Jorge Semprun, will attend the UN General Assembly's special session that was backed by the nearly 150 of the world body's 191 members. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and his Israeli counterpart, Silvan Shalom, will address the UN General Assembly for the 60th anniversary of the camps' liberation. The UN event will come three days before a state ceremony in Poland at the site of the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, where more than one million people - most of them Jews - perished before Soviet forces liberated it on January 27, 1945. Six million Jews died in the Holocaust. Coming 30 years after the world body adopted a resolution branding Zionism a "form of racism" - a move that soured UN-Israel relations - the UN's special session represents a significant event, a Western diplomat said. |
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