On 27 January 1945, Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp, was liberated by the Red Army. In 2005 January 27 was designated by the United Nations General Assembly to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp and the end of the Holocaust that occurred during the Second World War. It commemorates the genocide that resulted in the death of an estimated 6 million Jews, 8.7 million Slavs, 1.8 million ethnic Poles, 220,000 Romani people, 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, 312,000 Serb civilians, 1,900 Jehovah’s Witnesses, and 9,000 homosexual men by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
It is important to recognize that that are other dates designated to commemorate honoring the victims, survivors, and rescuers of the Holocaust during the Nazi regime:
- Yom Hashoa which in 2019 starts on evening May 1 and ends on the evening of May 2. In the United States, it is actually an 8-day period of remembrance programs and ceremonies, from the Sunday before Yom Hashoah to the Sunday after Yom Hashoah.
- In France – July 16 is observed to commemorate the mass arrest of 13,152 Jews in Paris on this date in 1942 and their extermination at Auschwitz.
In Honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, join is at the St Louis County Library to listen to a story of suffering and survival of Rachel Goldman Miller. This is a free program, open to the public.
