On the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day , UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called on the global community to "not only to look at our past, but to reflect on our present, and to safeguard our future."
Tuesday's solemn commemoration marks the day 81 years ago that the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp - where over a million people were murdered - was liberated by Allied forces towards the end of World War Two.
Commenting on the disturbing rise of antisemitism in recent years - including the "heinous attacks" targeting Jewish communities in Sydney and Manchester - Mr. Türk warned that "hatred and dehumanization are creeping into our daily lives."
He urged people to remember the lessons of the Holocaust, during which six million Jews were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.
"The genocide did not begin with concentration camps and gas chambers; it started with apathy and silence in the face of injustice, and with the corrosive dehumanization of the other."
