Nuncio joins event marking 60th anniversary of liberating Nazi camps

Published: 2005-01-25

UNITED NATIONS (CNS) -- The Vatican joined in a Jan. 24 commemoration by the United Nations of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps. Holding a special session for the first time to mark the anniversary, the U.N. General Assembly heard addresses by Secretary-General Kofi Annan and foreign ministers of Israel, Germany and other countries as well as by delegates of several other U.N. nation-members and Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The observance in particular marked the liberation of the Auschwitz camp in Poland by Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 1945. Related to the event was the opening of a special exhibit in the lobby of the U.N. headquarters building that is open to the public. Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican's U.N. nuncio, told the General Assembly that the Vatican welcomed the opportunity to "recall the victims of an inhuman political vision based upon an extreme ideology."

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