Genocide moved from Europe to Africa-France's Veil

By Evelyn Leopold


UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The lessons of the Holocaust and the mass killings in Cambodia did not end the threat of genocide as mass slaughter continues in Rwanda and Darfur, a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp said on Monday.

Simone Veil, a French politician, addressed the U.N. General Assembly as part of the body’s second commemoration of the Holocaust, timed to the liberation by the Soviet army of Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration camp.

"After the massacre in Cambodia, it is Africa that has been paying the price, in Rwanda, in Darfur," she told the audience, which included other survivors and their families.

Veil, who lost several members of her immediate family, recounted her year at Auschwitz when she was 17. "We don’t talk today about our families. We have to laugh so as not to cry," she said.

Veil, Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman and moderator Shashi Tharoor, a U.N. undersecretary-general, used the occasion to rebuff deniers of the Holocaust.

The General Assembly adopted a U.S.-drafted resolution on Friday condemning Holocaust deniers, weeks after a Tehran conference dominated by speakers questioning the extermination of 6 million Jews in World War Two.

"This new negation worries me because it has found a great echo through the new technology, especially among the young," Veil said, referring to the Internet.

Gillerman was more direct. "Today, that same member state tries to rewrite history, denying the Holocaust, denying the Nazi genocide, denying the painful fate of 6 million Jews and others in Europe, denying the value of human life and the very founding principles of this world body," he said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after coming to power in August 2005, caused an international outcry by terming the Holocaust a "myth" and calling Israel a "tumour" in the Middle East.

General Assembly President Sheikha Haya Al Khalifa of Bahrain called for paying tribute to all victims, and a representative of the disabled reminded listeners that those who had physical defects were the first to die.

"Today’s commemoration is an important reminder of the universal lessons of the Holocaust, a unique evil which cannot simply be consigned to the past and forgotten, " Al Khalifa said. "The Holocaust was a historical event, which cannot be denied. Its consequences still reverberate in the present."

At a news conference following the ceremony, representatives of the Roma and Sinti (gypsies) made clear that a half a million of their numbers at Auschwitz perished and most in central and eastern Europe were still subject to discrimination and the targets of violence.

"Especially in the countries of Eastern Europe, there are millions of members of our minority who live in ghetto-like housing, often cut off from any infrastructure," Romani Rose Chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma said.

He called for the United Nations to appoint a special human rights envoy to promote their rights.