On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, revisit NPR's stories from survivors
Thursday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945.
Nearly two decades ago, the United Nations General Assembly designated Jan. 27 an annual day of commemoration for its member states, in honor of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism. (In addition to marking the anniversary of Auschwitz-Birkenau, many countries hold national commemoration ceremonies on other dates connected to the Holocaust).
Remembrance Day also aims to promote Holocaust education, an especially timely mission with antisemitic incidents and Holocaust denialism on the rise in the U.S. and other parts of the world.
Notably, today's event arrives less than two weeks after a gunman held a rabbi and three others hostage for hours at a synagogue in the suburbs of Fort Worth, Texas.
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