The vote will be taken to mark the international day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust, established in 2005 by the United Nations and celebrated annually on 27 January, the date on which the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated in 1945.

On 27 January 1945, Soviet troops discovered the concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest in Europe occupied by Nazi Germany and where around 1.1 million people were killed, including nearly a million Jews.

More than six million European Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Third Reich.

The vast majority were killed in the Auschwitz death camp, built by the Nazi regime on Polish territory, but other non-Jewish prisoners, including Poles, Roma (Gypsies), and Soviet soldiers are also among the victims of this former complex.

Some 192,000 Jews lived in Austria before World War II. After the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, enthusiastically supported by many Austrians, more than 100,000 Jews fled the country.