Macon Reporter

State Rep. Dan Caulkins (R-Decatur) joined people from around the world in honoring the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Caulkins took to social media to pay tribute to the European Jewish victims who were murdered during World War II in areas occupied by Nazi Germany.

"Yom HaShoah is observed as Israel's day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews killed in the Holocaust and for the Jewish resistance in that period," Caulkins wrote in a Jan. 27 Facebook post.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), International Holocaust Remembrance Day was officially proclaimed in 2005. 

"The date marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945," Caulkins said in his Facebook post.

2022 marks 77 years since Soviet troops freed those enslaved at the Nazi concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, UNESCO stated.

"It is our shared responsibility to protect the truth, and to keep alive the memory of all those who suffered under the Nazi regime; to support research and documentation that can confront the fantasies of fanatics with the reality of history; and to study and teach the Holocaust, so that education may prevent anti-Semitism and all forms of racism," Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO's director general, said in a statement.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum hosted a virtual commemoration of the day of recognition on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The Illinois Holocaust Museum created a virtual reality exhibit to give visitors a better insight as to what it was like to live through the Holocaust at a concentration camp.

The exhibit, called The Journey Back, takes visitors through 360 degree virtual tour of the concentration camps with Holocaust survivors. Tickets are required for the virtual experience.