The United Nation’s General Assembly on Thursday adopted a resolution that condemns denial and distortion of the Holocaust.

The resolution was approved in the presence of a group of people who survived the Nazi genocide that killed about six million Jews, some two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe, during World War II.

The vote came on the same day, 80 years ago, during the Wansee Conference, when top Nazi officials discussed and coordinated the genocide of the Jewish people, establishing the system of Nazi death camps.

Introducing the resolution, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, himself a grandson of Holocaust victims, Gilad Erdan, said the world lives “in an era in which fiction is now becoming fact, and the Holocaust is becoming a distant memory.”

“Holocaust denial has spread like a cancer, it has spread under our watch,” he warned.

According to the resolution, this genocide “will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice.”

In the text, member states expressed concern about “the growing prevalence of Holocaust denial or distortion through the use of information and communications technologies.”

It also urged all member states to “reject without any reservation any denial or distortion of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part, or any activities to this end.”

The resolution commends countries that have “actively engaged in preserving those sites that served as Nazi death camps, concentration camps, forced labour camps, killing sites and prisons during the Holocaust, as well as similar places operated by Nazi-allied regimes, their accomplices or auxiliaries.”

It asked member states to develop programmes to educate future generations and urged social media companies to take active measures to combat antisemitism and Holocaust denial or distortion.

(NAN)