Germany welcomes holocaust commemoration day

The German government “emphatically” welcomed today’s unanimous decision of the UN General Assembly to establish an annual day to commemorate the six million predominantly Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust, the foreign minister said.

“For us Germans the crimes of the Holocaust will always remain the darkest chapter of our history and requires particular responsibility,” acting Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said in a statement.

“We can not, should not and will not escape this responsibility.”

Fischer praised the resolution’s emphasis on both “the duty to remember” and “the duty to educate” future generations about the mass slaughter ordered by Adolf Hitler, Germany’s Second World War Nazi leader.

“Especially today, when ever fewer survivors are able to pass on their experience of the Holocaust it is particularly important to find additioal ways to keep the awful crimes of the Nazis alive for coming generations,” Fischer said.

The resolution was sponsored initially by Israel, the United States, Australia, Canada and Russia. Gillerman said today it had 104 co-sponsors.