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Jewish World Review
Jan. 24, 2005
/ 14 Shevat, 5765
Today, U.N. will officially acknowledge the Holocaust
By
Joel S. Kaplan
http://www.jewishworldreview.com |(KRT)
Today, the U.N. General Assembly meets for the 28th time in special session — this time to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. This is the first occasion that the United Nations will officially acknowledge the Holocaust. It's about time.
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Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, welcomes Arafat |
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Sixty years ago, the world began to learn about the Holocaust. Six million men, women and children were systematically dehumanized, isolated and slaughtered simply because they were Jews. As Allied forces entered the concentration camps, commanders made their troops witness the Nazi atrocities so that the world would never allow this evil to happen again.
B'nai B'rith International witnessed the creation of the United Nations in 1945 in San Francisco after our organization's membership in Europe was decimated by the Nazi regime. One of Hitler's first acts against the Jews was to dissolve B'nai B'rith in Germany, and the Nazi occupiers in Holland demanded B'nai B'rith's membership rolls to facilitate an easier round-up of the Dutch Jews. Untold thousands of B'nai B'rith members and their families were murdered in the concentration camps. In Germany alone, more than 100 B'ai B'ith lodges were lost. Thousands of others survived.
Thus, when B'nai B'rith members witnessed the United Nations' creation, we had hope — hope that the world had finally learned its lesson. Hope that countries would come together and protect innocent human beings from discrimination, persecution and extermination. Hope that by gaining consultative status in 1947 with the UN's humanitarian arm, the Economic and Social Council, B'nai B'rith could lend its voice and expertise to the international action to advance human rights.
Created on the ashes of the Holocaust, the United Nations embodied the greatest principles of human rights and collective security, in order to prevent another genocide. In this, the United Nations has failed repeatedly. Millions of people have been killed while the United Nations stood inactive.
As the calls for U.N. reform demonstrate, the United Nations has fallen far short of the goals and principles set out in its founding documents. Indeed, the fact that it has take 60 years for the United Nations to acknowledge the Holocaust demonstrates the problems that plague it.
Throughout its history, the United Nations has been subject to the vagaries of geo-politics. Its efficacy has suffered due to the Cold War, regional and national political considerations. Meanwhile, the most vulnerable people continued to be defenseless in the path of human rights abusers.
Only in one instance has the United Nations been used consistently in a collective manner — to erode the basic human rights of the Jewish people. For more than 30 years, the U.N. institutions have been manipulated to isolate the only Jewish State in the world — a state that was created in the wake of the Holocaust to protect the Jews and fulfill their basic human rights of self-determination, religious freedom, and life, liberty and security of person. And, while Israel was increasingly isolated in the international community, the Jewish people were increasingly demonized as colonizers, occupiers, and, yes, even Nazis.
This is why the U.N. General Assembly Special Session is so important. Finally, the United Nations will acknowledge the war against the Jews. Finally, the United Nations will devote time and energy to examining the reasons the world needs the state of Israel as a refuge for the Jewish people. Finally, the United Nations will have the opportunity to examine the consequences of unchecked hatred and bigotry.
It could not come at a more important time. Today, we witness an upsurge in anti-Semitism around the world unparalleled since the 1930s. Today, we see a United Nations failing to prevent genocide in Darfur, Sudan — where each day thousands of people die while politicians and diplomats debate the issues. Today, we witness an alarming ignorance in the world about the Holocaust and the Nazi regime.
This is why B'nai B'rith International sent letters to more than 150 U.N. member states urging their support for this special session. We received back quick and positive responses, many of which caused us to have new hope for the United Nations. The world's newest country, Timor-Liste, told us that they were honored to support the request. Rwanda, Singapore, Sri Lanka and many others responded positively, citing the horrors of the Holocaust and the need to teach about genocide.
Indeed, many of the European Union countries in which Jews perished have confronted their histories during the Holocaust. They initiated the request with the liberator states — the United States, Russia, Australia, Canada, New Zealand — and, of course, Israel.
The special session should be a beginning for the United Nations: a beginning of the return to its founding principles; a beginning of a new era in actively preventing further genocides through promoting Holocaust education in every country around the world; and a beginning of a re-establishment of the Jewish peoplešs basic human rights in the international community.
These three steps would be the beginnings of real U.N. reform.
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Joel S. Kaplan is president of B'nai B'rith International. Comment by clicking here.
© 2005, Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services
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