Not inviting the country to the ceremony marking the liberation of Auschwitz risks fostering “new evil,” Aleksandar Vulin has warned
Excluding Russia from the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation has turned the ceremony into a gathering of descendants of Holocaust perpetrators and their collaborators, Serbian Deputy PM Aleksandar Vulin has said.
Speaking on International Holocaust Remembrance Day – January 27, when Soviet troops captured the death camp in 1945, established by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland – Vulin harshly criticized Warsaw’s decision not to invite a Russian delegation to the ceremony over the Ukraine conflict.
“The unthinkable crimes of the German people and state were ‘rewarded’ by the unification of Germany. Eighty years later, the liberation of Auschwitz is celebrated with the participation of countries that organized the Holocaust in Auschwitz, such as Germany and its allies, or countries that provided guards, such as Poland or Croatia,” Vulin stated.
The exclusion of Russia from the ceremony is another revisionist move and an attempt to rewrite history by EU member states, Vulin said. “If there are still living prisoners of Auschwitz among us, ask them to whom they owe their lives – to the grandchildren of the Red Army soldiers or to the grandchildren of the SS and Wehrmacht soldiers.”
The Nazis opened Auschwitz in 1939 as a concentration camp but expanded it later to carry out mass exterminations. According to various estimates, at least 1.1 million people, predominantly Jews, were killed at the death camp through gassing, starvation, fatal medical experiments, and so on.
Around 7,000 prisoners were rescued by Soviet troops from Auschwitz, while most were forced by the Nazis to march away from the advancing Red Army.
Around 50 former prisoners and survivors are taking part in the ceremony this year. Senior officials from 53 countries and seven international organizations also traveled to Poland for the commemoration. They include King Charles III, the first British monarch to visit Auschwitz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
