Post #28176

Russian Embassy in Rwanda: ✍️Article by the Ambassador of Russia to Rwanda, Alexander Polyakov On 27 January, a ceremony marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day was held at the Kigali Genocide Memorial. The date is observed in commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp, located on the territory of present-day Poland, where more than one million Jews were murdered during the Second World War. Judging by the coverage, the event was solemn and mournful in tone, in keeping with the gravity of the occasion. Speakers rightly stressed the imperative of preventing the recurrence of mass murder of people targeted for persecution on any grounds whatsoever, anywhere in the world. A well-founded parallel was drawn with another of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century: the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, in memory of which the memorial in the capital district of Gisozi was built. The international community and all people of good will were urged to confront, consistently and uncompromisingly, the dehumanising ideology of racial, religious, or political-ideological intolerance – an ideology that carries within it the threat of new genocides. And yet, not a single word was said about one circumstance that is fundamental for understanding the context of this commemoration – and, indeed, the Holocaust as a whole. Namely: Who, precisely, liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau 81 years ago, bringing the extermination of its prisoners to an end? Who made the decisive contribution to the defeat of Hitler’s Germany, thereby stopping the monstrous crimes committed for years (from 1933 to 1945) not only against the Jews, whom the Nazis set out to exterminate entirely, but also against many other peoples who became victims of the Third Reich’s aggression? No mention was made of the Soviet Union – of which modern Russia is the legal and historical successor. Notably, no Russian representative was invited by the organisers to honour the memory of the Holocaust’s victims and to recall the role of their liberators. It is painful to realise that this “forgetfulness” was hardly accidental. More likely, it reflects a trend of recent years: a “war on historical memory” being waged against our country – one that seeks to silence its real role in the greatest conflict in human history and its contribution to the victory over absolute evil embodied in the inhuman ideology and brutal deeds of Nazism. <...> 📄Read in full