U.N. marks Holocaust day

new york (jta) | The United Nations marked its first-ever Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday, Jan. 27.

“We sound an alarm, a call to arms and a wake-up call to the world, a world in which a member state of this organization denies the Holocaust while it prepares the next one,” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, told a General Assembly hall packed with Holocaust survivors, Jewish and Israeli officials and other members of the Jewish community.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan addressed the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust by video.

“There can be no reversing the unique tragedy of the Holocaust. It must be remembered with shame and horror as long as human memory continues,” Annan said.

minsk (jta) | A kosher bread line in a city in Belarus caused a string of anti-Semitic newspaper articles.

An editorial last week in the Mogilev Register, a local daily, warned those of the Russian Orthodox faith to keep away from kosher “products in the same way they keep away from idol sacrifice,” claiming that the blood of sacrificed animals is used in kosher rituals.

berlin (jta) | A German official proposed that the passports of suspected neo-Nazis be frozen so they cannot attend a Holocaust conference in Iran.

“It would massively damage Germany’s image if German citizens took part in Iran to deny the Holocaust or the right of Israel to exist,” Gunther Beckstein, Bavaria’s interior minister, said this week.

The proposed conference is seen as

an opportunity for Iran to showcase Holocaust deniers.

jerusalem (jta) | The Jewish Agency for Israel reported a dip in anti-Semitic incidents worldwide last year, crediting political pressure and police crackdowns.

Agency Chairman Zeev Bielski and Israel’s Diaspora Minister Avraham Hirschson presented the 2005 data last week at a news conference held by the Global Forum Against Anti-Semitism.

According to the findings, there were fewer anti-Semitic incidents in Britain, France, Belgium and the Czech Republic compared to the previous year. However, Russia and Ukraine saw a considerable increase in anti-Semitic incidents.