January 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the United Nations needs to take an honest look at its own history through the lens of this holiday — one that the organization itself created.
Since 1951, there has been an Israeli holiday of Yom HaShoah in remembrance of the six million Jews who died during the Holocaust. But in 2005, the United Nations adopted Resolution 60/7, creating a holiday with a two-fold purpose: to remember the Jew hatred that led to 6 million deaths and to educate future generations about the Holocaust so that they can never forget, ignore, or worse, deny it.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon defined the holiday in his speech on Jan. 19, 2008, at its second observance:
The International Day in memory of the victims of the Holocaust is thus a day on which we must reassert our commitment to human rights.