UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay participated in the official ceremony organized on 27 January by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camp by the Soviet army. More than 200 survivors of Auschwitz and 50 Heads of State and government paid tribute to the 1.1 million victims killed in the German concentration and extermination camp. The ceremony was opened by Polish president Andrzej Duda in front of the gate of the former Birkenau camp followed by testimonies of Auschwitz survivors, and interventions from Ronald Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress, and Piotr Cywinski, Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.
On the same day, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education Stefania Giannini visited the Shoah Memorial in Paris to participate in the inauguration of a new wall of names of Holocaust victims, in the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron.
These ceremonies were organized in the context of the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, which was the object of a series of events at UNESCO on 22 January.
UNESCO’s annual activities on the occasion of the International Day are organized within the framework of the Organization’s programme on education about the Holocaust and genocide.