United Nations Radio

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Today is a significant day - it's January 27, the United Nations community remembers the victims of the Holocaust. But this observation also reminds the world of the lessons to be learnt from the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide. Dianne Penn filed this story:

Dianne: Sixty years after her mother's parents were killed by the Nazis, Israel's ambassador to the UN Gabriela Shalev witnessed the power of history on another generation. Her own granddaughter, who was then a teenager, had travelled to Auschwitz to see for herself the execution wall, the gas chambers and the crematoriums where their relatives and so many others had been murdered.

SHALEV 1: A child born today will never meet a Holocaust survivor or hear first-hand the countless stories of tragedy and miracle that took place during the darkest hours of humanity. And so passing on the torch of remembrance, of bearing witness and of education becomes an even more critical task It is not only our duty to the past but perhaps even more so our responsibility to the generations to come.

Dianne: More than 70 years have passed since Kristallnacht, the anti-Jewish riots in Germany and Austria on November 9 and 10 1938. These pogroms signaled a change in Nazi Germany's policy towards Jews-from one that sought to remove Jewish people from German-controlled territory to one that aimed to completely eradicate them. Gary Phillips was working as a bicycle messenger in Berlin in November 1938. He recalled watching as one of that city's greatest synagogues was burned to the ground.

GARY 1: There were a few hundred people standing across the street watching the synagogue burn, and then I saw a man running away from that crowd and some people running after him shouting 'A Jew! A Jew! Stop him!' They opened a grate over the subway tunnel which let in air into the tunnel, and threw him down into the tunnel onto the tracks. I didn't see it I was later told that the train came and killed him.

Dianne: Phillips hopped back on his bike to complete his rounds. Years later, in New York, he described the aftermath of Kristallnacht-the 'Night of Broken Glass.'

GARY 2: Plate glass all over the place; Jewish stores being broken into, people helping themselves to whatever goods that were in the stores, and so on. I heard that about 30,000 male Jews had been arrested and sent to three different camps, with the understanding that if they can get a visa to emigrate immediately, then they would be released. And most of them managed.

Dianne: As the granddaughter of both victims and survivors of the Holocaust, Gabriela Shalev understands the importance of remembrance. Her ancestors were both German and Jewish, and proud of this heritage. But with the rise of Adolf Hitler, their lives were shattered. Some began anew in what later became Israel. Others met their end in the Nazi death camps.

SHALEV 2: As living remnants of the Holocaust victims, we must tell their stories one by one. It is the least we can do for them-and for so many others who will never have their stories told.

PRES: Gabriela Shalev is the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. You can find out more about the UN's commemoration of the Holocaust at www.un.org/holocaustremembrance.  For UN Radio, I'm Dianne Penn.

(duration:  3'45")