Russia has focused on the victims of Second World War I Soviet

There is a terrible reminder of more than 40 meters on the edge of St. Petersburg. At the top there is a mother’s image with his children.

Below, depicted in Bron, there are real stories of human suffering.

At the bottom of some stairs, a permanent fire surrounded by nazi concentration and massacre frameworks.

Auschwitz, Sovibor, Belzec, Trebrinkka …

Scary words that are synonymous with the holocaust.

However, this is not a reminder of the Holocaust. Its official title “The victim of the Nazi genocide was a reminder of the Soviet civilians”.

I listen to a driver to a group of school children while he informs the scroll-2 scope of the massacre. There the Nazis killed 900,000 Jews.

“It was a pre-blink-2 sphere of death, where many people died in the gas chambers,” he says, without determining that most victims were Jews.

Vladimir Putin Russia’s president inaugurated the monument on January 27, the date with a double historical importance to Russia. On this day of 1944 Soviet forces broke the siege of almost 900 days Leningrad. Exactly a year later the red army came into the gates of Auschw to Auschw.

Because the red army was released Auschwitz, January 27 was named the International Day of the Holocaust Memory.

But when he opened the memory of civilian civilians, Vladimir Putin did not talk about Holocaust, but rather with the genocide of the Soviet peoples. ”

The goal of the Nazis is “to acquire the rich natural resources and territories of our country, as well as destruction of the majority of the citizens”.

It’s not that Russia has silenced around the Holocaust. Auschwitz Liberation 80. Anniversary thread, several events associated with Holocaust have been throughout the country.

But in Russia today there is a clear change in focus, far from Holocaust, the Soviet people in its entirety, including Russian peoples, how he suffered during World War II. More than 27 million Soviet citizens were killed here as a great patriotic war.

This change of mind has not passed unnoticed.

“No one argues that in the World War II were millions of victims,” ​​Simone Halperin said to Israeli Ambassadors in Israel.

“But to kill, delete, delete a breed, deleting, deletion plan: The opposite of the Jewish village was important to remember that Holocaust was designed as a genocide of the Jewish people.”

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

“It is to present Russian ideas as a victim: victims of victims: victims of western powers, victims of history. That is the main idea of ​​this story.”

Konstantin lives abroad and works. The return home has been named “foreign agent”, a label used frequently to punish the criticism of Russian authorities.

Russia says that the story of Russia has taken a special force since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

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

In the Soviet Union, Holocaust and Hitler had little public debate about the systematic murder of European Jews.

The Nazis in the masses of mass Jews, in the Soviet territory, there were few monuments or places mentioned by the victims of the Jews.

He began to change after the falling communism. Russian officials began to speak proud to defeat their countries to defeat Hitler and save the Jewish people from the slaughter of the historic role.

Twenty years ago Putin was invited to Poland to Poland 60 Auschwitz Liberation. To participate in the anniversary celebrations.

On January 27, 2005, he spoke in Krakow:

“The Nazis chose Poland as the site of the massive massacre of the Jews … We see that the Holocaust is not only as a disaster of Holocaust as a national tragedy.”

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

Since then, Russia has increasing relations with Poland, Europe and the west in general, especially after the total invasion of Russia in 2022 in 2022.

Russian officials do not return to Poland at the 80th anniversary of the Auschwean camping release.

“It is the anniversary of freedom. We remember the victims, but we also celebrate freedom,” wrote the director of Piotr Cywinski Auschwitz Museum last September. “It’s hard to imagine the presence of Russia because it clearly doesn’t understand the value of freedom.”

The decision to extend the Moscura invitation has declined one of the most influential Jewish Jewish people in Russia.

“Not inviting Russia is an offensive contribution to the memory of the liberator and the victory of fascism,” said Alexander Boroda President of the Russian Jewish Community Federation in Moscow.

“It’s a very bad sign, because they helped defeat fascism because they are important memory. Despite the differences, the countries of Hitler’s coalition, political systems and different ideology achieved a common victory.”

Meanwhile, the Jews here are doing what they can to remember the past to remind the Russians, never repeat.

“The right wing is growing everywhere. It is increasing the number of denaters against the Holocaust,” says Anna Bokshitskaya executive directors of the Russian Jewish Congress.

“That’s why it is of great importance to report people that happened more than 80 years ago.”