Per the UN, and also observed by the EU, and many European countries, it commemorates the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Russian army, on January 27, 1945.
Is this the right date to have chosen?
The U.S. chose April 28 – 29th, the dates on which the U.S. army liberated Dachau. (Why did this take two days? Wikipedia doesn’t say here, but in the main Dachau article, this is described as a two-day process, with the surrender negotiated on the 28th, and the army actually taking over on the 29th.)
The Israelis have 27 Nisan (April or early May depending on the year), chosen in connection with the Warsaw Uprising (but with some additional complexities).
What date would you choose?
And, yes, I would get into bigger questions about the pledge of “Never Again,” but we’re doing a pretty sucky job at keeping that promise, anyway.
(Image: Holocaust memorial in Berlin, from By Guido Radig (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
UPDATE: Actually, I had my days mixed up when I typed this up, since, if you’ll notice, it’s only the 26th. But I’ll leave this up rather than “re-publishing” tomorrow. Oops!
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