Remarks by the Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at Holocaust Memorial Ceremony 2025 at the United Nations – Reblog

Remarks by the Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at Holocaust Memorial Ceremony 2025 at the United Nations

Dear former prisoners of concentration camps, and all Holocaust survivors,

Distinguished President of Israel,

Distinguished Secretary General,

Distinguished President of the General Assembly,

Colleagues,

Ladies and gentlemen,

We have gathered here today to commemorate the victims of one of the most horrific crimes in the history of mankind – the Holocaust. The extermination of Jews on the basis of their ethnicity was the result of the Nazi ideology of racial superiority. This ideology stems from inhumane colonial practices and elevated them to terrifying perfection.

We commemorate the victims of the Holocaust today – on January 27 – on the day when the largest death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau (Oshvenchim in Polish), where at least 1 million Jews had been exterminated, was liberated by the Red Army, which played a key role in stopping the relentless machine of human annihilation.

In this death camp, prisoners, including newborn children, were exterminated in gas chambers using the Zyklon B gas, which had first been tested on Soviet prisoners of war.

In the Auschwitz camp system, people, however, were not only slaughtered; they were also commercially exploited, and not just by the Nazis who extracted, for example, golden teeth and cut the hair of their victims, but also by large German companies. For example, Auschwitz-3 camp was essentially a branch of the chemical conglomerate IG Farben.

No aviation or artillery was used to liberate the camp. 231 Soviet rank-and-file soldiers and officers gave their lives for the freedom of Auschwitz prisoners. The soldiers were accompanied by Soviet doctors who had experience in treating the emaciated by hunger people of besieged Leningrad. And it is today – on January 27 – when we also commemorate the 81st anniversary of lifting the siege of Leningrad. More than 4,500 prisoners of Auschwitz received medical assistance in the very first hours and days of liberation, among them was Otto Frank – the father of the famous Anne Frank.

Maria Karakosova, medical service sergeant and Cavalier of two Orders of the Red Star, recalled how the eyes of emaciated people with blackened skin shone with happiness when they realized that their liberation came, and they were finally free.

Lieutenant Vassily Gromadsky, platoon commander, recalled that the liberated prisoners “cried and hugged us,” and they “told us that millions of people had been exterminated here.” He wrote: “I still remember, they told us that 12 railroad cars filled only with baby strollers had been sent from Auschwitz. They showed us the crematorium chimney and said that people were being burned there.”

Eva Mozes Kor was a Romanian Jew who survived human experiments in the Auschwitz concentration camp, and this is how she describes the liberation day in her autobiographical book «Surviving the Angel of Death»:

On the morning of January 27th, the noise stopped. For the first time in weeks, it was completely silent. We hoped this was liberation, but we had no idea what liberation would be like…

… Maybe about 3:00 or 4:00 P.M., a woman ran to the front of the barracks and started yelling, “We are free! We are free! We are free!”

Free? What did she mean?

Everyone ran to the doorway. I stood on the top step, huge flakes of snow were falling on me. I could not see anything beyond a few feet in front of me. The snow had fallen all day, and the dirty gray of Auschwitz was now covered in a white blanket of snow.

“Don’t you see something coming?” asked an older girl.

Then I saw them.

About twenty feet away, we saw Soviet soldiers emerging through the snow, approaching us in snow-covered capes and suits. They did not speak as they crunched through the snow.

As they came closer, they looked to us like they were smiling. Were those smirks or smiles? I peered closely. Yes, they were smiles. Real smiles. Joy and hope welled up inside of us. We were safe. We were free!

Crying and laughing, we ran up to the soldiers, crowding them.

A shout rose from the crowd: “We are free! We are free!” There was laughter and wails of relief all mixed together in a jumble of celebratory sounds.

Laughing themselves, some of them with tears in their smiling eyes, the Soviet soldiers hugged us back. They handed us cookies and chocolate— delicious!

It was our first taste of freedom…”

I am certain that children, who took the sweets then from the hands of Soviet soldiers, could not imagine that a few decades later the decisive role of the Soviet army in the victory over Nazism and in putting an end to the Holocaust would be questioned, that the country where Auschwitz was located would demolish monuments to the soldiers and officers of the Red Army who liberated their country and the death camp, that representatives of the State that brought liberation from the Nazi death machine would not be invited today to the commemoration events in the former camp. Auschwitz prisoners could not imagine either that Nazism and neo-Nazism would begin to raise their ugly heads in many parts of the world, as was pointed out correctly by the UN Secretary General today. Nor could they imagine that the days of liberation from Nazi troops would be declared days of mourning, that there would appear monuments and streets in honor of Waffen-SS veterans, that Neo-Nazi marches would be held, and that veterans of the anti-Hitler coalition would be forbidden to wear their decorations and insignia. That is why we annually submit to the UN General Assembly a resolution on combating the glorification of Nazism.

The memory of all the victims of Nazism,
including Jews, at least half of whom were citizens of the Soviet Union, is sacred for us. That is why we are convinced: it is our common duty to preserve the truth about the Holocaust and other crimes of the Nazis and their accomplices, particularly the genocide of the peoples of the Soviet Union.

This morning, we sent a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations which we requested to be circulated as a document of the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council. In the attachment to this letter one can find extensive factual evidence of recent acts of glorification of Nazis and their accomplices.

We must not forget: without the Great Victory of 1945, there would be neither the United Nations nor the world as we know it. It was the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition that took up the name of the United Nations, and no one has the right to consign this fact to oblivion!

I thank you.

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