PANAPRESS
Panafrican News Agency
Holocaust survivor named UNESCO Special Envoy for Holocaust Education
Paris, France (PANA) - Dr. Samuel Pisar, a Polish-born Holocaust survivor and acclaimed international lawyer, author and human rights activist, will be designated UNESCO Honorary Ambassador and Special Envoy for Holocaust Education, the UN agency said in press statement here Monday.
The ceremony, which will take place at UNESCO’s Headquarters on the International Day of Commemoration of the Victims of the Holocaust, 27 January, will be hosted by Irina Bokova, the UNESCO Director-General.
Apart from his professional activities at the American, French and British bars, Pisar, who was granted American citizenship by a special Act of Congress in 1961, is a board member of various public interest organizations, a trustee of Washington’s Brookings Institution, president of Yad Vashem France, as well as a director of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah and Israel’s Institute of Technology.
In his new role for UNESCO, Pisar will reflect on his commitment to the idea that “the Holocaust, attacked by incendiary demagogues as a ‘myth’, is an all too real warning for mankind of possible horrors yet to come -- for it has revealed, as have more recent genocides and ethnic cleansings, that humans are still capable of the worst as well as of the best, of hatred as well as of love, of madness as well as of genius, and that the unthinkable remains possible.
"Unless we espouse, through remembrance and education, the core universal values embedded in all great creeds - spiritual and secular - the forces of darkness may return with a vengeance to haunt us again,” according to the statement.
“Kaddish”, an oratorio written and narrated by Pisar, to Leonard Bernstein’s 3rd Symphony, will be screened during the event. Immediately afterwards, Pisar will accompany the Director-General to the Shoah Memorial, where they will lay a wreath in remembrance of victims of the Nazi genocide.
-0- PANA PR/VAO 23Jan2012
The ceremony, which will take place at UNESCO’s Headquarters on the International Day of Commemoration of the Victims of the Holocaust, 27 January, will be hosted by Irina Bokova, the UNESCO Director-General.
Apart from his professional activities at the American, French and British bars, Pisar, who was granted American citizenship by a special Act of Congress in 1961, is a board member of various public interest organizations, a trustee of Washington’s Brookings Institution, president of Yad Vashem France, as well as a director of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah and Israel’s Institute of Technology.
In his new role for UNESCO, Pisar will reflect on his commitment to the idea that “the Holocaust, attacked by incendiary demagogues as a ‘myth’, is an all too real warning for mankind of possible horrors yet to come -- for it has revealed, as have more recent genocides and ethnic cleansings, that humans are still capable of the worst as well as of the best, of hatred as well as of love, of madness as well as of genius, and that the unthinkable remains possible.
"Unless we espouse, through remembrance and education, the core universal values embedded in all great creeds - spiritual and secular - the forces of darkness may return with a vengeance to haunt us again,” according to the statement.
“Kaddish”, an oratorio written and narrated by Pisar, to Leonard Bernstein’s 3rd Symphony, will be screened during the event. Immediately afterwards, Pisar will accompany the Director-General to the Shoah Memorial, where they will lay a wreath in remembrance of victims of the Nazi genocide.
-0- PANA PR/VAO 23Jan2012
