Выступление Посла России А.Н.Дарчиева на мероприятии в честь 75-летия освобождения Красной Армией нацистского лагеря смерти Освенцим (Оттава, 30 января 2020г.)
Ladies and gentlemen, members of the diplomatic corps, dear veterans, our Canadian friends, comrades,
Tonight we are commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation by the Red Army of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, the most instrumental and ominous symbol of the Nazi death machine and the Holocaust as the embodiment of the hell on earth.
Paying tribute to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, it is high time to remember countless lives that were taken in the course of Nazi Germany’s enslavement of continental Europe and its onslaught eastward to conquer the Soviet Union. Emboldened by its early victories and the military-industrial power, Hitler and his clique arrogantly dreamed of blitzkrieg, but grossly underestimated the mass heroism of the Red Army and the tenacity of the Soviet people.
By unheard of cruelty, by pointed extermination of the Jewish population in ghettos and concentration camps, which spread fr om the Atlantic Ocean to the USSR’s occupied territories, Nazis and their local collaborators hoped to unroot any resistance to the New Order aimed at freeing the Third Reich of the German Aryan race from, what they called, “subhumans”.
And subhumans, denied the very right to exist, were Jews and Roma and Slavs, with Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, and all other nations of the Soviet Union destined to be decimated, assimilated and turned to become illiterate slaves or servants to their higher race masters. Just imagine how the world would look like, where all five continents are colored with swastika, if the Red Army and the Allied Forces would not defeat the absolute evil of Nazism.
It could not and should not be forgotten that the outcome of the Second World War depended heavily on the epic battle of Moscow, wh ere Germans were stopped just 25 kilometers from the Kremlin, on the great battles of Stalingrad and Kursk which both turned the tide of Nazi invasion back to the Hitler’s lair in Berlin, so that victorious and legendary Red Army shook hands in April 1945 with the US, British and Canadian allies, advancing from the West, at the river Elbe.
As the anti-Hitler coalition delivered devastating blows to the Nazi forces, massive Soviet resistance and guerilla warfare, in which young and old, man, woman and even children took part, instilled hope to hearts and minds of death camps’ and ghettos’ prisoners, that one day torturers and butchers of the Holocaust would face revenge and justice. Unconquered will and defiance, epitomized by the words of Abba Kovner “we will not go to slaughter like sheep” inspired those revolted in Vilno ghetto. It inspired the only successful uprising in the Sobibor concentration camp, led by the Red Army officer Alexander Pechersky, in October 1943.
On January 27th, 1945 the gates of Aushcwitz, decorated with the devil’s logo “Arbeit mach frei”, was opened wide by Soviet soldiers greeted by few remaining inmates. As other death factories, Maindanek, Buchenwald, Mautkhauzen, to name a few, were liberated, the horrifying truth sent shock waves about the extermination of six million Jews under the so-called “final solution of the Jewish question”, executed not only by the Nazis, but by their accomplices in making Central and Eastern Europe “judenfrei”.
Victory over the Nazism was won at an enormous cost of 27 million Soviet people died, killed and tortured to death. Two thirds of them were civilians. During the 900 days of the barbaric siege of Leningrad as many as close to one million inhabitants perished: we are thankful to the people and the government of Israel, which celebrates with Russia May 9th as Victory Day, for unveiling in Jerusalem the Memorial Candle monument dedicated to the residents and defenders of besieged Leningrad.
In our turbulent times, when anti-Semitism and xenophobia are again on the rise, when history is being rewritten for the sake of petty political calculations by glorifying Nazi collaborators and whitewashing Nazism, there should be no complacency or compromise. Denigrating Victory and the Soviet Union which crushed the backbone of the German Wehrmacht is not only shameless and reprehensible, insulting for our fallen heroes but also a dangerous and potentially backlashing attempt to reincarnate ghosts of the past and related phobias of hateful nationalism. Scapegoats could be easily found – Jews, Russians, Muslims, the list is endless.
The lessons of the Holocaust, as well as the memory of countless victims and survivors of the catastrophe, should make us vigilant and resolute not to allow the tragedies of the Second World War happen again. To be worthy of our martyrs, three basic principles are to be learned and followed, as we commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation and the coming Victory Day: never forget, never forgive, never ever again.
Дорогие ветераны, отмечая сегодня 75-летие освобождения Красной Армией нацистского лагеря смерти «Освенцим», мы с благодарностью вспоминаем советского воина-освободителя, спасшего нашу великую Отчизну и всю Европу от порабощения и истребления.
Если бы не героизм советских людей, беззаветно сражавшихся на фронтах Великой Отечественной войны, самоотверженно трудившихся в тылу, бивших врага в партизанских отрядах, выстоявших, стар и млад, в ленинградскую блокаду, не был бы разгромлен нацизм, а Гитлер и его подручные, прославляемые сегодня в некоторых странах, довели бы до конца Холокост, установив «новый порядок», в котором не нашлось бы места «недочеловекам», то есть нам с вами.
Низкий поклон всем, кто сражался за Родину. Россия помнит своих героев и не позволит переписать историю. Мы не забыли и не забудем, мы не простили и не простим. Правда на нашей стороне.
