United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk

Geneva, 24 January 2025

On this day 80 years ago, some 7,000 prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camps were liberated by Allied soldiers.

Exhausted, emaciated, terrified, and sick, those 7,000 were all that remained of 1.3 million men, women and children who had been deported to Auschwitz. They in turn were a small part of the six million Jews, the Roma and Sinti, people with disabilities, gay people, and so many others who were persecuted, hunted, and killed by the Nazis.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we bear witness to the darkest, most monumental of crimes. We honour the victims, we pay tribute to the survivors, and we remember that the world vowed never again to allow such atrocities to be unleashed on humanity.

To paraphrase Primo Levi, the celebrated writer who was one of the prisoners freed from Auschwitz 80 years ago: It happened, therefore it can happen again, and it can happen anywhere.

Commemorations like this one acknowledge the past. They must also examine the present and look to the future.

Today, hateful rhetoric is reverberating across much of our world.

Antisemitism is rampant, on our streets and online. Jews face increasing intimidation, threats and physical violence.

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