UN Urged to Commemorate the Victims of the Holocaust

A delegation of women’s groups associated with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations met yesterday with high officials of the United Nations and urged them to follow the lead of the Carter Administration in commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. In meetings with Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs, Brian Urquhart, and Teo. C. Van Boven, director of the Division of Human Rights at UN headquarters in Geneva, the Jewish women leaders deplored the “silence” of the United Nations during the world-wide ceremonies last week marking the Holocaust.

Mrs. Bernice Tannenbaum, president of Hadassah and leader of the delegation, also charged that by countenancing PLO terrorism against innocent civilians, including children, the UN was itself violating the spirit of the current UN sponsored International Year of the Child.

Urquhart replied that the office of UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim had issued a statement within one hour of the latest PLO terrorist, attack against Nahariya deploring the violence. He conceded that it had received little or no publicity. Van Boven said that any proposal for a UN event remembering the Holocaust victims would have to be made by a UN member state and approved by the General Assembly. No government has ever proposed commemorating the Holocaust victims, he said.

In her statement, Mrs. Tannenbaum said it would be “particularly appropriate for the United Nations, which was established by the countries that survived and then destroyed Nazism, to take special note of the Nazi slaughter of the Jews by an annual Day of Remembrance for its victims.