Though nations around the world may and do choose to honor their own national versions of Holocaust remembrance on different days throughout the year—Yom HaShoah in Israel being a prominent example—the United Nations General Assembly has officially designated January 27 as International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, often shortened to International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day was chosen in 2005 to honor the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, which was liberated by Soviet forces in 1945 and ratified via United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/7.