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Zelenskyy, Emhoff commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day; Putin does the opposite [1]

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Date: 2023-01-27

Putin and his cronies have had the audacity to claim that Ukraine’s treatment of Russian speakers in the country is comparable with the actions of Nazi Germany toward Jews. Putin has repeatedly declared that one of the goals of the “special military operation” was the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine.

Never mind the fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a Russian-speaking Jew. Zelenskyy’s grandfather, Semyon Ivanovich Zelenskyy, fought in the Red Army during World War II. Many of his grandfather’s close relatives, including his parents and three brothers, were killed in the Holocaust.

An image provided by the Ukrainian government shows President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attending a memorial service at the Babyn Yar memorial to Jewish victims of a German Nazi massacre on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2023.

Zelenskyy marked Holocaust Remembrance Day by attending a memorial service at the Babyn Yar memorial near Kyiv. The memorial suffered some damage from a Russian missile attack on March 3. Ukraine’s first-ever Jewish head of state spoke to foreign diplomats at the memorial on the site of one of the deadliest atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II. He said: "Today, as always, Ukraine honors the memory of millions of victims of the Holocaust. We know and remember that indifference kills along with hatred. Indifference and hatred are always capable of creating evil together only."

In Poland, for the first time ever, the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial museum did not invite Russian representatives to attend the ceremony marking the day the Soviet Red Army liberated the camp. “Given the aggression against a free and independent Ukraine, representatives of the Russian Federation have not been invited to attend this year’s commemoration,” Piotr Sawicki, spokesman for the museum at the site of the former camp, told AFP.

Museum director Piotr Cywinski said it was obvious that he could not send a letter to the Russian ambassador to Poland inviting him to attend the ceremony. “I hope that will change in the future but we have a long way to go,” he said, according to Poland’s PAP news agency. “Russia will need an extremely long time and very deep self-examination after this conflict in order to return to gatherings of the civilized world.”

Russia's Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar said the invitation snub “is clearly a humiliation because we perfectly know and remember the role of the Red Army in the liberation of Auschwitz and in the victory over Nazism," AFP reported.

"These political games have no place on Holocaust day," Lazar said.

Among those attending Friday’s ceremony at the Auschwitz museum and memorial was second gentleman Doug Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse of a U.S. president or vice president, NPR reported. Emhoff is visiting Krakow, Poland, and Berlin this week to promote Holocaust awareness and the Biden administration’s efforts to combat antisemitism.

x .@SecondGentleman Doug Emhoff, wearing a kippah, wipes away tears as he lays a wreath with a sash saying “from the people of the United States of America” against a wall at Auschwitz where the SS shot thousands pic.twitter.com/qOxJeFOtxz — Jordan Fabian (@Jordanfabian) January 27, 2023

NPR said Emhoff’s schedule includes a stop at Oskar Schindler's factory, a Shabbat dinner with the local Jewish community, a meeting with Ukrainian refugees, a round-table discussion with interfaith leaders, and visits to several museums and other historical sites.

Putin was not the only Russian leader to make controversial remarks about the Holocaust and Ukraine.

Last Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov drew strong criticism when he claimed that the West’s policy toward Russia over Ukraine resembled Adolf Hitler’s planned “Final Solution” for European Jews. Lavrov said:

"Just as Napoleon mobilized practically all of Europe against the Russian Empire, just as Hitler mobilized and captured ... the majority of European countries and sent them against the Soviet Union, now the United States has organized a coalition." Western countries, he said, are "by proxy through Ukraine waging war against our country." "The task is the same: the final solution of the 'Russian question.' Just as Hitler wanted to finally solve the Jewish question."

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, in a statement, said Lavrov’s remarks were “entirely misplaced, disrespectful and trample on the memory of the six million Jewish people, and other victims, who were systematically murdered in the Holocaust."

Borrell added that "the Russian regime's manipulation of the truth to justify their illegal war of aggression against Ukraine has reached another unacceptable and despicable low point." Borrell said there was "no parallel between the crimes of Nazi Germany and the international help for Ukraine in defending its territory and people against an unjustified aggression."

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/27/2149615/-Putin-makes-a-mockery-of-Holocaust-Remembrance-Day-repeating-claims-about-Ukrainian-neo-Nazis

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