{"id":291343,"date":"2026-01-27T12:16:01","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T17:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/pga\/80\/?p=291343"},"modified":"2026-01-28T00:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T05:03:07","slug":"pga-remarks-at-holocaust-memorial-observance-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/pga\/80\/2026\/01\/27\/pga-remarks-at-holocaust-memorial-observance-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"PGA Remarks at Holocaust Memorial Observance 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Remarks by the President of the General Assembly\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

H.E. Ms. Annalena Baerbock<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Holocaust Memorial Observance 2026 <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust<\/strong><\/p>\n

United Nations<\/b><\/p>\n

\n

Tuesday, 27 January 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

[As Delivered]<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Six million Jews\u2014almost two-thirds of Europe\u2019s Jewish population\u2014murdered.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Targeted and killed simply for, who they were\u2014Jews.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Millions more\u2014including Roma and Sinti, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+\u2014killed, in cold blood, being described by Nazi Germany as \u201casozial\u201d, not worthy of life.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Human beings inflicted these horrors upon other human beings\u2014made possible by dehumanization that allowed unimaginable cruelty to become routine; what Hannah Arendt called the \u2018banality of evil.\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mr. Secretary-General,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Excellencies,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rabbi Schneider,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ladies and gentlemen,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And especially Distinguished Holocaust survivors,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ms. Konrad,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ms. Weinstein,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Ms. Tomenko,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And Ms. Blumenthal Lazan, who I just met at the corridor, and realized that the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, where she was deported as a child, I visited decades later as a student from my school.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Excellencies,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On today\u2019s International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, it is our duty not only to recommit to the promise of \u201cNever Again\u201d \u00a0– a promise that is etched into the very DNA of our United Nations, its Charter, and its Universal Declaration of Human Rights\u2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But it is also our duty to speak out, even louder than before, when signs of dehumanization emerge again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As the Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    \n
  • It began with words and with laws.<\/li>\n
  • With singling out Jews, just because they were Jews.<\/li>\n
  • With synagogues burned.<\/li>\n
  • And with neighbors who chose silence when the Jewish store next door was boycotted, and when the owner was dragged out from his home with his little girl.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

     <\/p>\n

    As Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal said, \u201cFor evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    A quote you can also find at the memorial site of the former concentration camp Auschwitz.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    And given that we are living in times of shockingly high levels of antisemitism and holocaust denials, just recently a study came out from ±¬ÁÏÍøESCO that in three fourths of every classroom in Western Europe, we see antisemitism.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    And I am very thankful to the Missions of Poland and Germany who will enable us to have a live virtual guided tour of the different sites of Auschwitz-Birkenau tomorrow here at the United Nations at 8:30 a.m. in the Trusteeship Council Chamber.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    In times that people deny that Auschwitz even happened, a guide at Auschwitz will take us to the piles of millions of shoes being exposed there. Shoes like yours.\u00a0 Big and small.\u00a0 Brown little shoes of girls.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Sandals like our own daughters would wear, torn off from the little Jewish girl, taken from her home.<\/p>\n

    Torn off from her, alongside her clothes, her hair.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Stripping away every shred of humanity before sending her, with millions, to the gas chamber.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Think of these shoes, the shoes the Jewish little girl she once wore, every time you see and hear the warning signs of what made the Holocaust possible once.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    The rhetoric of \u201cus versus them\u201d.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    The dehumanization of people, putting Jews against others.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    This means not turning a blind eye to antisemitism, in all its different forms.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    When more than 1,400 Jews were murdered, slaughtered and kidnapped at the Nova Music Festival, in their Kibbutzim, at their homes on the 7th of October.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Or when you read an online post denying that the Holocaust happened.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    But also when your colleague is afraid to show her Star of David necklace.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    And also when your neighbors are faced with racial profiling. With Islamophobia. Sexism. With homophobia.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Because questioning the rights of some, simply for who they are, where they come from, or what colour their skin is all has the same end: dehumanization, which eventually spreads to all.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    As back then German pastor Martin Niem\u00f6ller warned, and engraved at the Holocaust Memorial in Boston Massachusetts in a longer version:<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \u201cWhen they came for the Jews… I did not speak up, I wasn\u2019t a Jew.<\/em><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    When they came for the Catholics\u2026 I did not speak up. I was a Protestant. <\/em><\/p>\n

    When they came for me, no one was left to speak up.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \u201cNever Again\u201d is not a slogan. It is a duty.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    A duty to speak up and to stand up.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    To defend the dignity and human rights\u2014not of some\u2014but of every member of our human family, everywhere, every day.<\/p>\n