The 2025 International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust falls on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on 27 January 1945.
Marianne Muller was born in Budapest in 1942. She survived the Holocaust. Her mother, Violetta Nobel, used her wedding ring to bribe a guard, and escaped deportation, running away holding little Marianne in her arms. They survived the Holocaust together, constantly in hiding.
The Nazis transported nine-year-old Marion Blumenthal, her brother Albert and their parents to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Here they endured terrible deprivation, and the children were witness to daily acts of inhumanity that no child should ever have to experience.
Salomea Ochs Luft, a Jewish pianist, was murdered in the Holocaust. A letter she wrote to her family, calling on them to avenge her murder and the atrocities committed by the Nazis, survived.
Two generations later, her great nephew, Nur Ben Shalom founded the Lebensmelodien ("Melodies of Life") project in response to Luft’s plea. The project’s acclaimed musicians perform music composed or heard or sung during the Holocaust. A well-known actor narrates the stories of the music. Lebensmelodien brings back to life the music the Nazis intended to silence forever.
On 27 January, Marianne Muller, Marion Blumenthal, and Nur Ben Shalom will participate alongside the Secretary-General and dignitaries in the observance in the General Assembly Hall of UN Headquarters in New York (join the event).
United Nations Information Offices from Geneva to Vienna, Pretoria to Brazzaville have organized programmes of remembrance, reflection, and education.
Eighty years after the Holocaust, remembrance continues to sound a clarion call for collective action to ensure respect for dignity and human rights, and the international law that protects both.
More about the 2025 programme of Holocaust remembrance and education.
