Countries across the world on Friday January 27 honoured the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism.
On 27 January 1945, Soviet troops stormed and liberated the Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
On this annual day of commemoration, the UN urges every member state to honor the Holocaust victims and to develop educational programs to help prevent future genocides.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said, “Forgetting the lessons of history leads to the repetition of terrible tragedies.”
Putin on Friday also said that neo-Nazis were committing crimes in Ukraine and that is why Russia launched its military intervention in Ukraine.
“This is evidenced by the crimes against civilians, ethnic cleansing and punitive actions organized by neo-Nazis in Ukraine. It is against that evil that our soldiers are bravely fighting,” Putin said in a statement.
Supporters of Putin’s military operation allege Ukraine’s treatment of Russian speakers in the country is comparable with the actions of Nazi Germany.
One of the goals of the operation was the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine, Putin said when he announced nearly one year ago he had ordered Russian troops toward Kyiv.
The Soviet Union’s victory over Hitler’s army — long a symbol of patriotic pride for Russians — has taken center stage since the beginning of the military intervention.
Putin said that “attempts to revise the contributions of our country to the Great Victory (against Hitler) actually equate to justifying the crimes of Nazism and open the way for the revival of its deadly ideology.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky marked Holocaust Remembrance Day by urging the world to unite against “indifference” and “hatred,” nearly one year into Russia’s invasion of his country.
“Today, as always, Ukraine honours the memory of millions of victims of the Holocaust. We know and remember that indifference kills along with hatred,” Zelensky said in a video statement.
Zelensky, who is of Jewish descent himself and from the pre-dominantly Russian-speaking south of the country, did not refer directly to Russia’s invasion in his address.
