🇷🇺🇲🇹 Russian Embassy in Malta

🎙Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s comment on International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27, 2026) 💬 Adopted in 2005, UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/60/7 provided for designatingJanuary 27 as International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. ☝️ Russia was among the co-sponsors who initiated the adoption of this document. It contains the following wording:“Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people, along with countless members of other minorities, will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice.” There was a reason to mark this day on January 27. #OTD in 1945, the forces of the Red Army’s 1st Ukrainian Front under Ivan Konev’s command liberated #AuschwitzBirkenau(Oswiecim) and saved the surviving prisoners. This resolution also conveyed a sense of respect and admiration within the international community towards the courage and selflessnessby the soldiers who liberated this concentration camp. On January 26, 2026, members of Russia’s foreign missions in Poland laid wreaths to a mass grave of the Red Army personnel at the local parish cemetery in Oswiecim to commemorate their feats. These servicemen died in January 1945 while fighting to liberate this town and its suburbs. 🌟In 2025, Russia and all the progressive forces around the world marked #Victory80. It is our country, including all the nations within the former USSR, that made a decisive contribution to destroying Hitler’s war machine, liberating Europe and the entire world from the so-called brown plague, even if this came at an incredible cost and required an all-out effort and all the resources we had. The #Holocaust, i.e., the mass extermination of Jews and other minorities, was one of the most tragic events of the 20th century. It will always remain inscribed in the history of humankind as a symbol of unprecedented and unspeakably cruel attempt at fulfilling a human-hating ideology. This history teaches a terrifying lesson and serves as a warning which shows where the ideas of supremacy, exceptionalism, segregation by religion, race and other attributes can lead. <...> Russia takes great care to keep alive the memory of the many millions of victims who perished during #WWII, which we call the Great Patriotic War, as well as the memory of the feat accomplished by the Soviet liberator soldiers who stopped the Nazis and extinguished the fire of the Holocaust. Our country paid an excessively high price to allow anyone to question or challenge the #GreatVictory. We will do everything we can to ensure that horrendous crimes of this kind never happen again. Russia is firm and resolved in its commitment to countering any attempts to falsify facts about World War II and rehabilitate Nazism. <...> Today, the Russian Jewish Congress, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia and other specialised entities are making an invaluable contribution to preserving the memory of Holocaust victims around the world. The Foreign Ministry has been closely and effectively collaborating with them. As usual, there will be many events in Russia to mark this day. On January 14-31, our country holds the annual Holocaust Remembrance Week, while the Russian Jewish Congress awards the Memory Keepers award which celebrates exceptional contributions to preserving the memory of the Holocaust. As part of the Remembrance Week, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art will open an exhibition on January 28 titled “Dmitry Lion. Procession.” It is timed to coincide with the 100th birthday of one of the key figures in post-war Soviet art for whom the tragedy of the Holocaust served as a starting point in his creative journey. Read in full

🌟#OnThisDay8️⃣0️⃣ years ago, on January 27, 1945, Auschwitz-Birkenau (Oswiecim, was located in Nazi-occupied Poland) — the most terrifying German extermination camp in #WWII — was liberated by the Red Army’s 1st Ukrainian Front during the Vistula–Oder offensive operation. #Auschwitz was created by the Nazis in 1940 in a building that used to serve as military barracks near a small town called Oswiecim, whose history dates back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Having occupied Poland in 1939, the Nazis changed the town's name of Oswiecim to German Auschwitz. Later, in 1941-1943, two more imprisonment facilities were established in the vicinity of Oswiecim. They were: ▪️Auschwitz II — best known to the wider public as #AuschwitzBirkenau, was three kilometres away from the main facility — Oswiecim and located near Brzezinka, a Polish village (Birkenau in German). Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest "death factory". Equipped with crematoriums and gas chambers, it was created by the Nazis with only one aim — exterminate people. ▪️Auschwitz III (also known as Monowitz). Its prisoners were used by the Nazis for the Third Reich war industries. Following the so-called Wannsee Conference in 1942, the Nazis approved what was called the “final solution to the Jewish question”. Since then, Auschwitz-Birkenau was turned into the main "death factory" for the annihilation of Jews in Europe. ❗️ Prisoners of Oswiecim were held by the Nazis in inhuman, barbaric conditions. They had to do hard, exhausting work until total exhaustion, to endure poor sanitation in the camp's facilities, malnutrition and constant tortures by the guards and SS-troops. It was in Oswiecim that the Germans first tested the "Zyklon-B" poisonous agent on human beings. Prisoners of Auschwitz were also subjected to cruel medical experiments, led by a Nazi criminal, infamous retired military doctor Josef Mengele. In 1944, when the Red Army started the liberation of Europe, the Nazis, in an effort to cover the tracks of their crimes in Auschwitz, rushed to burn documents and destroy the camp's gas chambers, crematoriums, and deported as many prisoners as they could westward to other concentration camps deep in the Third Reich — over 58,000 prisoners were evacuated by the Nazis before Oswiecim and liberated by the Soviet forces in January, 1945. *** In January 1945, the units of the 1st Ukrainian Front launched the Vistula-Oder offensive and, successfully expelling the Nazis from Poland, finally reached Auschwitz. ⚔️ In the late hours of January 27, following three days of fighting the retreating enemy, the Red Army took over Oswiecim and opened the gatesofAuschwitz. The camp’s 7,000 prisoners were freed. Most of them were sick or suffering from extreme exhaustion and tortures. Rescued prisoners burst into tears of joy when they greeted their liberators. Some facilities of the camp were instantly made a hospital. According to various historic estimates, in 1940-1945, from 1.5 to 4 million people perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Over the past years, we are witnessing a campaign in several European countries, including Poland, to rewrite and falsify the history of WWII and, in particular, to erase the memory of the feat performed by the Soviet soldiers-liberators who saved the Auschwitz prisoners. 🎙 From a briefing by Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on topical foreign policy issues (January 23, 2025): 💬 "This year, like all those years before, Russian representatives will not be invited to the commemoration ceremonies at Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27. That is, there will be no one there to mention the Soviet liberator soldiers and express gratitude to them. In this regard, there is something that needs to be said to the organisers and all the Europeans who will be there: Your lives, your work and leisure, the very existence of your nations, your children have been paid for by Soviet soldiers, their lives, their blood. It was them who crushed the Third Reich machine. You are forever in their debt." 🕯#WeRemember