Paris, 3 February 2024

Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, participated in last week’s Holocaust Victims’ Commemoration Day at UNESCO.

On 27 January 1945, Red Army troops discovered the Nazi horrors perpetrated in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.

In the wake of the 7 October terror attacks by Hamas, more than ever is it necessary to remember the effects of genocidal intent, and combat today’s threat of a repetition of the Shoah!

Among the speakers were UNESCO Director-General, Audrey Azoulay, Vice-President of the Memorial of the Shoah, François Heilbronn, and President of the Munich Jewish Community, Holocaust survivor Charlotte Knobloch. Samuels also met with Imam Hassen Chalghoumi, a friend of the Jewish people and a voice for moderate Islam, with whom the Centre has cooperated in tolerance education and against Islamist extremism over the past twenty years.

Samuels with Chalghoumi (photo Alain Azria).

In addition, the ceremony included several songs performed by the Institute of Concentrationary Music Literature, in particular melodies composed by Holocaust inmates. The Director of the Institute, Francesco Lotoro, was awarded by the Simon Wiesenthal Center with its Medal of Valour in 2020.

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