On 26 January, a documentary exhibition opens at the Central Great Patriotic War Museum on Poklonnaya Gora. That same day, the museum hosts a memorial event marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The message reads, in part:
Dear veterans and friends,
On these days, we are marking the 70th anniversary of liberating the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by the Red Army.
We honour the memory of Holocaust victims and those killed during the inhuman war unleashed by the Nazis. We grieve for them, and we remember the heroism of victorious soldiers who stopped the terrifying work of Nazi “factories of death.”
People who have not experienced the horrors of war should know the exorbitant price that humankind had to pay for pandering to xenophobia and chauvinism.
In the past few years, the memory of World War II has been distorted for speculative political purposes. Cynical attempts are being made to proclaim war criminals and Nazi accomplices as heroes. By the way, this is being done by politicians of those countries that suffered most of all from Nazism. These actions are not simply immoral, but they are also extremely dangerous. They provoke new conflicts and cause real tragedies. To revive the most drastic manifestations of nationalism is to forget the lessons of World War II, which inflicted innumerable losses on the world. I am confident that all those who consider themselves civilised people understand this well.
Dear friends, allow me, from the bottom of my heart, to thank veterans for winning the Great Patriotic War and to wish all of you good health, a long life, prosperity and peace.
Dmitry
Medvedev
