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Add to Preferred SourcesCommemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, and the six million Jews and others murdered on Nazi orders during the Holocaust, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told a ceremony in New York that the world must “recommit to preventing any repetition of those crimes”.
“Our solidarity in the face of hatred is needed today more than ever, as we see a deeply worrying resurgence in antisemitic attacks around the world, and, almost unbelievable, also around us here in New York”, he said on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Noting a rising trend in antisemitic hate crimes across the United States, he recalled that less than a month ago, a knife attack injured five at a Hannukah party in Monsey, and left four dead at a kosher supermarket in neighbouring New Jersey.
Citing incidents in the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, he also noted that 2018 saw a 74 percent jump in antisemitic attacks in France.
“There is a global crisis of antisemitic hatred; a constant stream of attacks targeting Jews, their institutions and property”, spelled out the UN chief.
Moreover, he maintained that the antisemitic upsurge was tied to “an extremely troubling increase” in xenophobia, homophobia, discrimination and hatred in many parts of the world, targeting people based on race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, disability and immigration status.
“The most important lesson is that the Holocaust…was the culmination of millennia of hatred, from the Roman Empire to the pogroms of the Middle Ages”, he continued. “My own country, Portugal, committed an act of utter cruelty and stupidity by expelling its Jewish population at the end of the fifteenth century”.
The Holocaust was “a complex operation arising from long-held prejudices” with societal corruption that ran throughout, from language to education and political discourse, the UN chief explained.
He urged everyone to examine their own prejudices, “guard against the misuse of our own technology and be alert to any signs that hatred is being normalized”.
Original source: UN News
Published on 27 January 2019