Note to Correspondents

United Nations Video Conference with Students of Seven Countries on 15 November

 

Will Mark Anniversary of Kristallnacht Pogrom in 1938

 

A United Nations video conference to promote education about the Holocaust, with students in seven countries in Africa and Asia, will take place on Monday, 15 November.

Organized by the “Holocaust and United Nations Outreach Programme” in partnership with the House of the Wannsee Conference and Memorial and Educational site in Berlin, it will take place in observance of the anniversary of the Kristallnacht Pogrom on 9 November 1938.

[The Outreach Programme was mandated by General Assembly resolution 60/7 and established in 2006, to honour the memory of Holocaust victims and in order to prevent future acts of genocide.]

United Nations Information Centres in Accra, Colombo, Dar es Salaam, Dhaka, Harare, Kathmandu and Yangon will bring local high school students together to hear the personal testimony of Margot Friedlander, a Holocaust survivor, who will speak from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin.

Mrs. Friedlander was arrested and taken to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where she was spared from deportation to the Auschwitz death camp and managed to survive, unlike her entire family which was killed by the Nazis.  After the war, Mrs. Friedlander and her husband immigrated to the United States.

She said she was excited and honoured to be sharing her story of survival with students from around the world, and hoped her experience could help inspire young people to stand up to discrimination “when they see it happening in their communities”.

Before the video conference, the United Nations Information Centres will brief the students on the history of the Holocaust, using tools such as the United Nations Holocaust Programme’s “Footprints for Hope” educational kit, which includes a film entitled Footprints:  Discovering the Holocaust through Historical Artefacts, a lesson plan and a PowerPoint presentation.

The House of the Wannsee Conference is a long-time partner of the Holocaust and United Nations Outreach Programme.  Its memorial and educational site was opened in 1992.  For more information on the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Education Site, please contact Wolf Kaiser, Deputy Director, at tel.:  +49 30 805 001, e-mail:  wkaiser@ghwk.de.

More information on the activities and educational products of the United Nations Outreach Programme can be obtained at www.un.org/holocaustremembrance, or by contacting Kimberly Mann, Information Officer, Outreach Division, at tel.:  +1 212 963 6835, e-mail: mann@un.org.

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For information media • not an official record