Israeli-German initiative: UN resolution denounces Holocaust denial

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Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin: Portraits commemorate Jews killed by the Nazis

Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

On the 80th anniversary of the so-called Wannsee Conference, the UN General Assembly issued a resolution denouncing the denial and trivialization of the Holocaust.

The text submitted by Israel and Germany was unanimously approved in New York.

Among other things, the document calls on states and Internet companies to actively combat anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid welcomed the adoption of the resolution in a joint statement.

"We are very concerned about the dramatic increase in Holocaust denial, falsification and revisionism," it said.

»It is our duty to remember, learn and confront the increasing revisionism, denial and falsification of the Holocaust – online and offline.«

At the so-called Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, high-ranking Nazi officials discussed the systematic murder of up to eleven million Jews in Europe.

The aim of the meeting in a villa on Berlin's Wannsee was to accelerate the implementation of the genocide.

It is considered one of the key events of the Holocaust.

»The darkest chapter of our history«

Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) recalled the joint responsibility of the officials in her agency for the Holocaust.

They "put themselves at the service of the crimes and genocide of the Nazi regime," she explained.

“They became willing helpers of injustice.” Something like this should never happen again.

»Anyone who bears responsibility in the civil service must first and foremost be committed to the law and humanity, not to power.«

"The Wannsee Conference stands like no other event for the cruel crimes of National Socialism," said FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr.

It »commemorates the darkest chapter of our history«.

"The Holocaust must always be a reminder to us," said the Left Party leaders Amira Mohamed Ali and Dietmar Bartsch.

»The fight against anti-Semitism, fascism and racism must be an absolute duty of all of us.«

The Federal Government's Commissioner for Integration, Reem Alabali-Radovan (SPD), wrote on Twitter that there should be no "line in the memory" of the Nazi crimes.

»Anyone who notices misanthropy and anti-Semitism today must contradict!«

"The idea of ​​denying people their humanity, belittling them, persecuting them or even murdering them because of their belief, their appearance, their origin or their orientation should have died out during the Nazi era," explained CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak in writing Twitter.

"But it's not him."

mrc/dpa