UN to convene Auschwitz commemoration day

A majority of the 191-member General Assembly agreed to a special session this month to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation…

A majority of the 191-member General Assembly agreed to a special session this month to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, the United Nations announced today.

Members were polled by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the request of the United States and with the support of Russia, Hungary, Canada and European Union nations to convene the meeting on January 24th, believed the first of its kind in recent memory.

Soviet Red Army troops freed the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland on January 27th, 1945. The 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is to be observed this year as Holocaust Memorial Day.

"This will be an important occasion since the United Nations was founded as the world was learning the full horror of the camps, and is dedicated to doing everything in its power to protect human dignity and prevent any such horror from happening again," UN spokesman Mr Stephane Dujarric said.

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"He (Annan) calls on all member states to give the session their full support," Mr Dujarric said. US Ambassador John Danforth, in a December 10th letter to Mr Annan, said the General Assembly should convene three days before the official anniversary to avoid conflicting commemorations in Auschwitz.

Mr Annan received 111 letters supporting the meeting "and they are still coming in," a spokesman said.

Only 96 were needed to convene the session. Six million Jews were exterminated in the concentration camps and millions of others - including Poles, homosexuals, Soviet prisoners and Gypsies - were killed, imprisoned or used as slave labor.

A session on the Holocaust would mark a change for the General Assembly, which sets aside several days a year for resolutions on the rights of Palestinians and Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.