https://www.nytimes.

com/2022/01/20/world/americas/united-
nations-holocaust-resolution.html

U.N. Approves Israeli Measure to Condemn Holocaust

Denial
The resolution was aimed at combating what Israel and other countries have described
as an epidemic of disinformation about the murder of nearly six million Jews and
millions of others by the Nazis.
By Rick Gladstone
Jan. 20, 2022

The United Nations on Thursday adopted an Israeli resolution that condemns denial
and distortion of the Holocaust, the Nazi genocide that killed nearly six million Jews
and millions of others.

Adoption of the resolution by the 193-member General Assembly, co-sponsored by

Germany and supported by the United States and Russia among many others, took
place against the backdrop of rising antisemitism globally, punctuated by an attack on
a Texas synagogue less than a week ago.

Israel and other sponsors called the resolution necessary because of the profusion of
misinformation and ignorance about the Holocaust and events surrounding it,
especially among the young.

The General Assembly adopted the resolution by consensus — meaning it was

approved without a country-by-country vote. Only Iran, Israel’s most ardent adversary,
objected.

The resolution’s passage amounted to an unusual, albeit symbolic, diplomatic victory

for Israel at the United Nations, where the narrative is often perceived by Israelis to be
biased in favor of Palestinians’ aspirations for their own state.

Diplomats said it was only the second time since Israel’s founding that the General
Assembly had adopted an Israeli-backed resolution. The first was in 2005, when a
resolution on establishing International Holocaust Remembrance Day was approved.
That day, Jan. 27, commemorates the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp
by Soviet soldiers in the final days of World War II.
The vote on Thursday had been scheduled to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the
Wannsee Conference, the 1942 lakeside gathering where high-ranking Nazi leaders
devised what they called the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” a plan to
exterminate Jews. A third of the world’s Jewish population, including 1.5 million
children, would die under their organized policy of gassing, shooting and slave labor in
Auschwitz and at other concentration camps established by Hitler’s Nazi regime.

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations and a grandson of Holocaust
victims, said in formally introducing the resolution that although the atrocities had
been highly documented, “we now live in an era in which fiction is now becoming fact
and the Holocaust is becoming a distant memory.”

Mr. Erdan said only about half of the world’s population had even heard of the
Holocaust, and that some believe the events were a “complete myth.”

Amplified by social media, Mr. Erdan said, “Holocaust denial has spread like a cancer
— it has spread under our watch,” which had made the General Assembly resolution
necessary.

The resolution reaffirms that the Holocaust “will forever be a warning to all people of
the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice.”

It expresses concern about “the growing prevalence of Holocaust denial or distortion

through the use of information and communications technologies,” and urges all U.N.
members to “reject without any reservation any denial or distortion of the Holocaust as
a historical event, either in full or in part, or any activities to this end.”

The resolution also commends countries that have “actively engaged in preserving
those sites that served as Nazi death camps, concentration camps, forced labor camps,
killing sites and prisons during the Holocaust, as well as similar places operated by
Nazi-allied regimes, their accomplices or auxiliaries.”

It also urges all U.N. members “to develop educational programs that will inculcate
future generations with the lessons of the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future
acts of genocide” and urges “social media companies to take active measures to
combat antisemitism and Holocaust denial or distortion.”

The United Nations already undertakes a number of educational efforts to combat

antisemitism and Holocaust denial, largely through the work of UNESCO — the U.N.
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Last year, for example, UNESCO and
the World Jewish Congress signed an agreement with Facebook directing users
searching for Holocaust terms to an information website they created,
aboutholocaust.org.

Eliot Minchenberg, director of the UNESCO office in New York, said a similar
agreement could soon be signed with TikTok.

He also said the new U.N. resolution would “definitely give us more support, and
maybe leverage, when it comes to engaging member states” in the effort to educate
people about the Holocaust, noting that in many countries, its history is not taught in
schools.

“We shouldn’t be surprised if kids don’t know,” he said.