The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme seeks to remind the world of the lessons to be learnt from the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide.
The Outreach Programme was created at the request of the United Nations General Assembly in its resolution 60/7, adopted on 1 November 2005. The United Nations Department of Public Information (UN DPI) has taken the lead in creating a broad initiative, designed to encourage the development by United Nations Member States of educational curricula on the subject of the Holocaust, and to mobilize civil society for education and awareness.

The "Holocaust Remembrance" resolution also designates 27 January as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust – observed with ceremonies and activities at United Nations Headquarters in New York and at UN offices around the world.

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UNIC Port of Spain launched its first activity in 2007 with small event at the Centre with a small exhibit and ceremony. The next year the exhibit grew to include displays and a kit with replicas of memorabilia from a survivor. That same year Hans Stecher, who was a survivor that fled to Trinidad and Tobago from Austria, attended and told his story to the audience. 

photo:  UNIC's first observance at the Centre in Port of Spain. credit: UNIC Port of Spain/W Ramnarine

At every event since then Hans would attend observances of the International Day and tell his story of discrimination by his peers at school, arrest and narrow escapes of his relatives and how he and his relatives eventually arrived in Trinidad and Tobago with the help of an uncle who lived in Venezuela.

Hans established a local jewelry store that grew into a successful business today and was active member of the "Calypso sheti" a local name that the Jews in Trinidad called themselves. He died in 2014.

photo: UNIC travelling exhibit in Rio Claro, Trinidad. credit: UNIC Port of Spain/W Ramnarine

UNIC travelling exhibit on the Holocaust has been to south and central Trinidad, Tobago and Surinam as part of joint activities with non-governmental organisations who partner with the Centre including UN Depository Libraries.