[JURIST] UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon [official website] on Wednesday stressed [official statement] the importance of education to prevent new genocides, speaking at an event acknowledging the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. The Secretary-General spoke at an event at UN headquarters in New York City urging the global community to remember the horrors of Holocaust and work to prevent the dark parts of history from occurring again. In his speech, Ban stated that, “[t]oday, with a rising tide of anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and other forms of discrimination, we must do even more to defend these rights for people everywhere.” Ban said that the international community must work to fight xenophobia and prevent new genocides in the modern day. Wednesday marked 71 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi extermination camp.

German courts have recently seen a flurry of war crimes-related charges against former members of the German Nazi party. Prior to 2011 German prosecutors often chose not to charge individuals they regarded as simply “cogs” in, rather than active members of, the Nazi war machine. In November a German court deemed [JURIST report] that a 93-year-old former SS sergeant, charged with 170,000 counts of accessory to murder for allegedly serving as a Nazi camp prison guard, was fit for trial. The 2011 conviction [JURIST report] of former Nazi guard John Demjanjuk may have emboldened German prosecutors to pursue cases against all those who materially helped Nazi Germany function. The most recent person imprisoned for their role in the Holocaust was Oskar Groening. Known as the “accountant of Auschwitz,” Groening was charged [JURIST report] in September 2014 as an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people. In June, Groening was given a four-year jail sentence for his role at Auschwitz, a sentence Groening said he would appeal [JURIST reports].