International Holocaust Remembrance Day is the UN-designated annual day to honor the victims of the Holocaust; the General Assembly established it in 2005 and set the date—January 27—because it is the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz‑Birkenau camp on 27 January 1945.
Auschwitz‑Birkenau was the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp complex (Auschwitz I, II–Birkenau, III–Monowitz and many subcamps) in occupied Poland where well over one million people—about one million of them Jews—were murdered; Soviet Red Army forces liberated the camp complex on 27 January 1945, freeing roughly 7,000 surviving prisoners.
The U.S. counters antisemitism globally through a mix of diplomacy, dedicated personnel and guidance, and programmatic support—chiefly the State Departments Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism (SEAS); publishing and promoting the Global Guidelines for Countering Antisemitism; coordinating international partners and multilateral bodies; and implementing actions from the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism (education, law‑enforcement training, incident reporting, security support and public diplomacy).
"Justice for survivors and heirs" typically means restitution and compensation efforts (return or financial settlement for stolen property, immovable assets and looted art), survivor compensation programs and benefits, legal claims and negotiations with governments and private entities, and efforts to recover Holocaust‑era assets—measures carried out by states, international organizations, and bodies such as the Claims Conference and restitution initiatives like the 1998 Washington Principles and the 2009 Terezin Declaration.
Multiple U.S. offices share responsibility: the State Department (including the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism and relevant regional bureaus), the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (a federal‑chartered institution that leads education and remembrance work), the Department of Justice (hate‑crime enforcement and legal actions), and interagency White House mechanisms that implement the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.
Defending the integrity of Holocaust memory involves education and public programming (school curricula, teacher training, survivor testimonies), museum and archive preservation, documentation of evidence, combating denial and distortion online, adoption/promulgation of recognized definitions of antisemitism, and international cooperation to preserve sites and provenance research—actions promoted by governments, SEAS, IHRA and institutions like the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.