Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorated around the world

Countries around the globe are set to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day today with ceremonies and memorials coinciding with the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Approximately six million Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and its collaborators. Some historians use a definition of the Holocaust that includes the additional five million non-Jewish victims of Nazi mass murders, bringing the total to approximately eleven million. 

In Washington, US President Barack Obama will attend a ceremony at the Israeli Embassy posthumously honoring four Righteous Among the Nations – non- Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said, in a message to European Jews on Tuesday: “I never imagined a rabbi in Marseille would have to tell his community it might be better to hide the kippa, I never imagined that Jewish schools and synagogues would have to be guarded, I never imagined a Europe where Jews feel so insecure that immigration to Israel reaches an all-time high. Seventy-one years after the liberation of Auschwitz, this is intolerable."

In Poland, President Andrzej Duda, along with his Croatian counterpart, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, is expected to attend the ceremony at the Auschwitz memorial. Dozens of survivors and their relatives will be on hand for Wednesday’s commemoration.

Separate events and ceremonies marking the day will take place both at UNESCO headquarters in Paris and at the United Nations complex in New York today.