International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust (27 January 2007)

The United Nations has designated 27 January as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. On this date in 1945 the Auschwitz death camp was liberated.

Auschwitz, in southern Poland, was the biggest Nazi death camp and liberated by Soviet Red Army troops on 27 January 1945. Up to 6 million Jews are estimated to have died in the concentration camps, as well as hundreds of thousands of others deemed undesirable due to ethnic origin, religious beliefs or other reasons, including gays and communists.

Selected learning materials

"Guidelines for Teaching About the Holocaust" in: Teaching about the Holocaust: A Resourcebook for Educators (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
This guide provides methodological guidelines for teaching about the Holocaust. It also addresses questions about why to teach Holocaust history and offers suggestions on how to incorporate the study of the Holocaust into existing courses such as world history, government/civics, philosophy and literature.

Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know (Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds.)
This book was published on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary -in August 1999- of the Geneva Conventions, with the aim of encouraging public knowledge of the principles of conduct in war and includes an article on international human rights oblivations in regard to genocide.

Simon Wiesenthal Center (USA)