Entering the General Assembly for the first time since I was a kid on a class trip to the United Nations seemed unusual. The institution that we have been vilifying for so long due to its insatiable appetite to condemn Israel was hosting its annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, so designated by the UN in 1951 to coincide with the day that Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Soviet troops, Jan. 27, 1945. I had once before attended this event with my father, a”h, about seven years ago but that ceremony was held in a much smaller room. Now we were in the General Assembly and from the program you would think that you were in your local shul or at our Teaneck Holocaust Commemoration that is held in conjunction with Yom HaShoah (this year on April 24).
The first speaker was the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, who spoke about the resurgence of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in Europe and how his country, Portugal, rejected anti-Semitism. Quoting Elie Wiesel he asked, “How do we mourn six million? We honor their memories and rededicate ourselves to learn the lessons of the past.” He went on to say that “the Holocaust was the culmination of millennia of hatred and discrimination targeting the Jews—what we now call anti-Semitism,” and called for increased education so that it would not happen again. (Interestingly enough, the Secretary General emphasized the Holocaust as being uniquely Jewish, something the Trump administration couldn’t seem to point out.) The theme of remembering the six million and educating people about the Holocaust was echoed by the other speakers including President of the UN General Assembly, Peter Thomson, and Deputy Permanent Representative of the United States to the UN, Ambassador Michele Sison, who also referenced current human tragedies such as in the Sudan and Syria. “We can never normalize intolerance,” she declared.
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon stated, “We remember our history as painful as it may be, so that we learn from it and never let it repeat itself.” But he also did not lose the irony of the setting decrying the fact that only weeks ago the Ecuador Ambassador to the United Nations in the same hall compared Zionism to Nazism, and the African National Committee in South Africa declared that Israel’s founding was “a crime against humanity,” yet the UN was silent and did not rebuke these comments. He also mentioned that there are agencies in the United Nations who are putting together a black list of companies who do business in Jerusalem in order to facilitate a boycott against those companies. But despite this, he declared that Israel will survive and prosper. Danon introduced the keynote speaker, Noah Klieger, who was flown in from Israel for the occasion, accompanied by his grandson Yuval, an officer in the IDF. Klieger, a 91-year-old practicing journalist, is a survivor of Auschwitz and told of the horrors of the death marches and how two-thirds of the prisoners died on the way to the camp. “Those who did not live through an extermination camp cannot convey what really happened,” he stated. “In a few years, there won’t be any survivors who will be able to tell about this genocide, which was the worst ever in human history. Who will tell our stories once we’re gone? Now is the time for the UN to take the additional step to adopt a resolution which encourages teaching the younger generations about this terrible time in the history of humanity to keep it from happening again,” Klieger pleaded. Aside from the ceremony in New York, the United Nations held ceremonies in 47 different countries on Friday.
The event also included a moving tribute to the late Elie Wiesel, whose wife, Marion, was in attendance. It contained interviews with Wiesel, clips of his trip to Auschwitz with Oprah Winfrey and his amazing story of rising from the ashes of the death camps to become the conscience of the UN, having been appointed the United Nations Messenger for Peace.
In all, the program was quite moving and included Cantor Israel Singer from Temple Emanu-El of Closter singing Ani Maamin and Keil Maaleh Rachamim as well as vocalist Rachel Joselson, who sang Yiddish songs of the Shoah. The audience was mostly, though not exclusively, Jewish and there was a small number of Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans in attendance who were recognized in the beginning of the ceremony by Cristina Gallach, UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information. Among them was Sol Birenbaum of Westwood, who survived eight concentration camps including Ravensberg and Auschwitz. For the last eight years, he has spent two months in Poland and Germany speaking to schoolchildren about his experiences. Mr Birenbaum wore his concentration camp cap to the ceremony and displayed to me the number tattooed on his arm. He too has dedicated himself to educating others about the lessons of the Holocaust, something we plan to do once we raise the money to establish our Northern New Jersey Holocaust Education Center. Attending this event and witnessing the dedication of these survivors only makes that mission more and more important.
By Steve Fox
Steve Fox is the Co-chair of the Northern New Jersey Holocaust Memorial and Education Center (www.nnjholocaustmemorial.org) as well as Co-chair of the Teaneck Holocaust Commemoration Committee (www.teaneckyomhashoa.org). He can be reached at [email protected].
