09 August 2007
Continuing its relationship with the United Nations, Yad Vashem has received NGO status at the UN’s Department of Public Information (UN/DPI). Affiliation with the Department of Information at the United Nations will help enable Yad Vashem to continue its efforts to disseminate accurate and comprehensive information about the Holocaust around the world.
Over the past several years, Yad Vashem has been working with UN/DPI on Holocaust education and information projects, including building a website for UN centers around the world as part of last year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day events, done in conjunction with the USC Shoah Foundation, and the CDJC in Paris. Electronic resources in Spanish are currently being developed in cooperation with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
A special forum for UN staff members from Europe and Asia is planned for October at Yad Vashem. The forum aims to deepen UN personnel’s knowledge of the Holocaust, as well as to provide material, ideas and information for preparing projects and activities that will enable implementation of the UN resolution to annually commemorate the memory of the victims of the Holocaust (on January 27). The resolution was passed by the UN General Assembly in November 2005.
Yad Vashem has also presented temporary exhibits at UN headquarters in New York. In January 2005, marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Yad Vashem created a special traveling exhibit, “Auschwitz: The Depth of the Abyss”. In 2006, Yad Vashem’s “No Child’s Play” exhibit was displayed in the Visitor’s Lobby of the UN.
