Russia focuses attention in World War II on Soviet victims

On the outskirts of Saint Petersburg there is a spectacular monument more than 40 meters high. At the top is the figure of a mother with her children.

Below, depicted in bronze, are true stories of human suffering.

At the foot of some stairs an eternal flame burns surrounded by the names of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps.

Auschwitz, Sobibor, Belzec, Treblinka…

Terrifying words synonymous with Holocaust.

However, this is not a Holocaust memorial as such. Its official title is “the monument to Soviet civilians who were victims of the Nazi genocide.”

I listen to a tour guide tell a group of schoolchildren about the Treblinka-2 extermination camp. There the Nazis murdered up to 900,000 Jews.

“Treblinka-2 was an extermination camp where a large number of people were murdered in gas chambers,” he states, without specifying that the majority of the victims were Jews.

Russian President Vladimir Putin inaugurated the monument last year on January 27 – a date with double historical significance for Russia. On this day in 1944, Soviet forces broke the siege of Leningrad that lasted almost 900 days. Exactly one year later, the Red Army crossed the gates of the Auschwitz extermination camp..

Due to the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army, January 27 was declared International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

But when he inaugurated the monument to Soviet civilians, Vladimir Putin spoke not of the Holocaust, but of the “genocide of the Soviet people.”

He argued that the Nazis’ goal had been “to seize the rich natural resources and territories of our country, as well as to exterminate the majority of its citizens.”

It is not that Russia has been silent about the Holocaust. On the eve of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, several Holocaust-related events have been held across the country.

But in today’s Russia there is a perceptible shift in focus, away from the Holocaust and toward how the Soviet people as a whole, including the Russian people, suffered in World War II. More than 27 million Soviet citizens died in what is known here as the Great Patriotic War.

This change in emphasis has not gone unnoticed.

“No one maintains that there were millions of victims during World War II,” Israel’s ambassador to Moscow, Simone Halperin, tells me.

“But an industrialized plan to kill, eliminate, wipe a race from the face of the earth: that was against the Jewish people. I think it is vitally important to remember that the Holocaust was designed as the genocide of the Jewish people.”

“It’s not because (Russian authorities) don’t want to talk about the Holocaust or the Jews,” suggests historian and researcher Konstantin Pakhaliuk.

“The idea is to present Russians as victims, to feel that we are victims: victims of Western powers, victims of history. That is the central idea of ​​this narrative.”

Konstantin lives and works abroad. In his country he has been declared a “foreign agent”, a label often used to punish critics of the Russian authorities.

He argues that the Russia-as-victim narrative has become especially strong since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“If you’re a victim, you can’t take responsibility,” Pakhaliuk says.

In the Soviet Union there was little public discussion of the Holocaust and what had been Hitler’s systematic murder of European Jews.

At the sites of mass execution of Jews by the Nazis, in Soviet territory, there were few monuments or plaques referring to the Jewish victims.

That began to change after the fall of communism. Russian officials began to speak proudly of their country’s historic role in defeating Hitler and saving the Jewish people from extermination.

Twenty years ago, President Putin was invited to Poland to participate in events commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Speaking in Krakow on January 27, 2005, he noted:

“The Nazis chose Poland as the site of the planned mass extermination of people, especially Jews… we see the Holocaust not only as a national tragedy for the Jewish people but as a catastrophe for all humanity.”

“It is our duty to remember the Holocaust,” he added.

Since then, Russia’s relations with Poland, Europe and the West in general have become increasingly strained, especially after the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russian officials have not been invited to return to Poland for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp.

“This is the anniversary of the liberation. We remember the victims, but we also celebrate freedom,” wrote the director of the Auschwitz Museum, Piotr Cywinski, last September. “It is difficult to imagine the presence of Russia, which clearly does not understand the value of freedom.”

The decision not to extend an invitation to Moscow has been condemned by one of Russia’s most influential Jewish leaders.

“Not inviting Russia is offensive to the memory of the liberators and their contribution to the victory over fascism,” Rabbi Alexander Boroda, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, said at a news conference recently in Moscow.

“It is a very bad sign because memory is important and there are common values ​​that helped defeat fascism. Despite their differences, the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition, different political systems and ideologies managed to unite… for a victory common”.

Meanwhile, Jewish groups here are doing everything they can to remind Russians of the past so that it is never repeated.

“The right is rising everywhere. The number of Holocaust deniers is increasing,” says Anna Bokshitskaya, executive director of the Russian Jewish Congress.

“That is why it is vitally important to inform people about events that occurred more than 80 years ago.”