There are two kinds of Holocaust survivors to Yehudit Rotem — those who've spoken out about their experiences and those who've remained silent.

At 16 months old, Rotem was too young to know when she and her family entered the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lohheide, Germany. During her childhood, talk of the experience was limited, she said.

"My parents, like many others, belong to the section that didn't speak about it," Rotem said. "But the Holocaust was present in our life even though we didn't talk about it."

Now, the world will listen.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to make Jan. 27 an annual international commemoration day of the Holocaust.

The resolution, which was unanimously passed Nov. 1, is in remembrance of the millions of people — including Jews, Poles, homosexuals, Gypsies and those with mental and physical disabilities — killed during the Holocaust.

It also serves as a recommendation for member states of the United Nations to develop educational programs to help prevent future acts of genocide.

The date designated is in recognition of Jan. 27, 1945, the day when the largest Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, was liberated.

"After such a long time, the U.N. understood that everyone has to remember this Holocaust — it's not something which happened and passed away," Rotem said. "The Holocaust changed the whole world, not just the Jewish faith.

"It made a big stain on all humanity."

Rotem, who lives in Tel Aviv, Israel, was at MSU on Wednesday to speak about her experiences.

Although her parents and older sister survived the Holocaust, her grandparents and several aunts, uncles and cousins did not.

"I grew up with this notion that half of my parents' world was, in a strange way, as if a tree was cut into two pieces," she said. "One stayed alive and the other piece, with many leaves and branches, was just cut."

The resolution is fitting because it marks the 60th anniversary of both the end of the Holocaust and the beginning of the United Nations, said John Bolton, the U.S. permanent representative to the U.N., in an Oct. 31 statement.

"The United Nations as an institution was built upon the ashes of the Holocaust and the second World War with an important mission," said Bolton, who co-sponsored the resolution, in the statement. "That mission is to help ensure that the international community will never again allow such a crime against humanity to be committed, never again allow the world to be plunged into such violence and chaos."

The resolution was the first Israel has ever initiated.

Ken Waltzer, MSU's Jewish Studies Program director, said the Holocaust commemoration day represents a broad, verbal commitment to human rights.

"It's a measure of the spread of the global concern of human rights and the norms of national behavior," he said. "Once something like the Holocaust is done to one set of people, it can be done to another. It's an important international event, that the world (should) stop in late January and recognize that the Holocaust should never happen again to any people."

After growing up in Israel, Rotem married an ultra-orthodox Jewish scholar and had nine children in about 12 years, two of whom died. She worked as a teacher to support the family while her husband studied, and found herself questioning her position in the ultra-orthodox society.

"I wasn't suited to this kind of life — I didn't like the restrictions," she said. "I felt it was superfluous and I had many questions.

"I wanted to understand, but nobody would explain it to me," Rotem added. "It was just 'do' or 'do not.'"

In 1983, Rotem left her husband because she felt he was a representation of the society she was against. She began working as a ghost writer to support her children and later wrote five books, four of which are loosely based on the ultra-orthodox society.

At MSU, she talked about her experiences and her achievements as an author.

Rotem said she has loved reading and writing since childhood and turned to both pastimes as an escape from the "harsh world" she lived in.

"Maybe I wanted to be like the writers who gave me so much pleasure, so much happiness," she said. "It could be that as I was not allowed to ask questions as my parents were so silent about what happened in the Holocaust. I wanted to open it and come out of muteness to speech — I'm really grateful that I could achieve this."