Holocaust

Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich made a statement at the OSCE Permanent Council meeting in Vienna on January 21.

We arepublishing the full text by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation press office.

In response to remarks by Ambassador Szabolcs Takács,

Chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance,

and Ambassador Felix Klein, Special Representative of the German Federal Government

for Relations with Jewish Organisations,

Anti-Semitism, Holocaust Remembrance, Roma and Sinti (Gypsy) Issues.

Mr Chaiperson-in-Office,

Ambassador Takács and Ambassador Klein,

We welcome you to the Permanent Council meeting and thank you for your substantive presentations on such an important issue.

Seventy-one years ago, Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp, where millions of people, including about 1 million Jews, were brutally exterminated. This day, January 27, was proclaimed International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Russia became one of the principal co-authors of the UN General Assembly resolution that instituted this date in 2005.

The criminal ideology of Nazism, aimed at the extermination of entire ethnic and social groups, left a bloody trail in the history of the 20th century. According to Nuremberg Trial materials, 6 million Jews were killed in Europe, including over 100,000 of our compatriots.

However, Jews were not only victims of this war. Soviet citizens of Jewish ethnicity made a major contribution to the victory over Nazism. Over 500,000 Jews fought in the Red Army and more than 40,000 fought in guerilla detachments. Almost one in three volunteered for the front. Nearly 200,000 fell in combat. About 161,000 Soviet soldiers of Jewish ethnicity were awarded combat medals and orders and over 130 people had the title of Hero of the Soviet Union bestowed upon them.

The multiethnic people of the USSR sustained the heaviest losses in World War II. Of 70 million Soviet citizens who ended up under Nazi control, about 7.5 million were killed, over 2 million died in labour camps in Germany, and more than 4 million died in occupied territories. While paying tribute to the Holocaust victims, we cannot forget that tens of millions of people from various ethnic backgrounds were tortured to death at Nazi concentration camps, including almost 10 million Slavs. In all, according to adjusted figures, over 26 million Soviet citizens died in that war.

In this context, we cannot fail to remember another date. January 27 is observed as End of the Siege of Leningrad Day. It is another example of the crimes committed by the Nazis, who in cold blood killed Leningrad civilians not only by bombing and artillery shelling but also with a famine that lasted for almost 900 days.

Such crimes have no and can have no statute of limitations. Any attempts to play down these events, to distort or rewrite history are unacceptable and immoral. Behind such attempts is often the wish to conceal one’s own shame of betrayal and to justify direct or indirect collaboration with the Nazis. However, historical facts are incontrovertible. They show that Banderites and other collaborators and Hitler accomplices were directly involved in the extermination of Jewish people, in particular, the Jews of Lvov, Odessa, Kiev and other Ukrainian cities, as well as on Polish soil. Regarding the Baltic Nazis, they carried out ethnic purges in Vilnius, Riga, Kaunas and Tallinn.

It is necessary to draw lessons from this war tragedy without skewing moral guidelines. No historical grievances may justify SS atrocities or the attempts to equalize victims and executioners, liberators and invaders.

We pay tribute to the memory of all those who were tortured to death by the Nazis and their accomplices in concentration camps and ghettos, and we mourn the millions of people killed in that war. On the initiative of public and religious organisations, not only Jewish organisations, work is underway in Russia to search for and tidy up the mass graves of Holocaust victims and to restore the names of the dead. The Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Holocaust opened in Moscow long ago, and in 2012, the Tolerance Museum opened at the Jewish Centre. On January 27, Holocaust lessons are traditionally held at schools. There is the Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities. Synagogues are restored, monuments are erected and tribute is paid to veterans and concentration camp prisoners.

This painstaking, day-to-day work is of key importance for bringing up the younger generation and preserving the historical truth about World War II and the heroic feat of all those who saved the European nations against enslavement or total extermination. Crimes like the Holocaust must not be repeated. This is the common duty of the entire world community.

Nevertheless, misanthropic ideas are still very much alive in Europe. We continue to encounter attempts to divide societies on ethnic, racial or religious grounds. On January 19, President Vladimir Putin met with European Jewish Congress leaders. Congress President Viatcheslav Kantor noted with regret that the memory of the Holocaust has failed to become a vaccine against anti-Semitism. According to this influential organisation, the situation of Jews in Europe today is the worst since the end of World War II. A new exodus of Jews from Europe is a realistic prospect.

Mr Chaiperson-in-Office,

Death factories, mass executions and deportations became a horrible reality of the 20th century and were thoroughly organised in what at the time seemed to be a civilised Europe. History has shown that where the ideas of ethnic and racial superiority and exclusiveness are instilled into people’s heads, where the seeds of hatred of other people are sown, and where traditional values are mocked, civilisation is inevitably replaced by barbarity and terror, by conflicts and wars.

We must stand together against such threats, protect peace and people’s freedom, and uphold the right of states and nations to their own path of development. Today in the 21st century, it is crucial to make the collective security system more efficient, to advance the values of humanism and cooperation, and to always remember the lessons of history.

Thank you.