News Brief

The United Nations began a week of Holocaust commemorations. The International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, which falls annually on Jan. 27, was marked Monday at U.N. headquarters in New York City with a memorial concert, a panel organized by B’nai B’rith International and the unveiling of a commemorative postage stamp by the U.N. Postal Administration. “To those who claim that the Holocaust never happened or has been exaggerated, we respond by reiterating our determination to honor the memory of every innocent man, woman and child murdered at the hands of the Nazis and their accomplices,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said in a statement. The B’nai B’rith panel featured remarks by Sandra Roberts, the Tennessee teacher who became an icon of Holocaust education after being featured in the film “Paper Clips,” a documentary about a class project to collect one paper clip for each Holocaust victim. Dr. Katrina Lantos-Swett delivered a speech Monday on behalf of her father, U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), the Jerusalem Post reported. Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, blasted efforts to delegitimize Israel within the United Nations, which he said is often a forum for “shameless invective against Israel.”

The speech was part of an event that featured a concert by the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music Symphony Orchestra at Tel Aviv University and conducted by Zubin Mehta.