Russia Marks 80th Anniversary of Liberation of Auschwitz

By COLlive reporter
Photo: Ivan Nadorozh and Dmitry Zharov

Exactly eighty years ago, Red Army soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest death camp in all of human history. From 1940 to early 1945, more than four million Jewish people were murdered and burned there until January 27, when Russian Red Army soldiers arrived and liberated the camp.

Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar opened the ceremony by sharing the story of the family Holocaust on his maternal side. “My mother, may she live and be well, was born in Hungary in 1941. Hungary was then a close ally of the Nazis, almost all of Hungary’s Jews were sent to concentration camps and murdered. And my mother was saved only because there were people who risked their lives and saved Jews…”

Rabbi Lazar said, “The Lubavitcher Rebbe said that the key to all morality, to all respect, to peace and coexistence is solely faith and love for God, who sees all our actions and hears all our words. Human life is a precious gift from the Creator, and it is humanity’s duty to protect it with care. Yes, more than eighty years have passed since those terrible days when the Nazi death machines were in operation. There are almost no people left who survived the tragedy of the Holocaust themselves. But we – the generations of their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren – will always remember and talk about it, we will talk about it at home, in schools, on the street.

“We will continue to be proud of our connection with God and will affix mezuzahs to the doors of every Jewish home. We will do everything to live in peace. But at the same time, we must continue the struggle against Hitler’s heirs. We must not give up. And we must not make peace not only with those who plot to organize a new Holocaust in the twenty-first century but also with those who talk about the “rights” of pogroms and call for a “compromise” with them. Only in this way can the civilized world make a repeat of the Holocaust truly impossible!”

The event was held at the World War II memorial complex in the Jewish Museum of Moscow and was emceed by the spokesman for the Jewish communities in Russia, Rabbi Baruch Gorin. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin sent a letter to the event.

After reciting “Kel Malei Rachamim,” six public figures were honored with lighting six memorial candles in memory of the six million Holocaust martyrs. The first candle was lit by the famous Russian cultural figure Kalman Ginsek, who was sent to a ghetto in Latvia with his parents a week after his birth. The additional candles were lit by ambassadors of the USA, England, Germany, Poland and Israel.

In the city of Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland, the “March of Life” was held on Sunday, in which masses of the city’s Jews marched a ten-kilometer route. The very same route upon which about seven thousand martyrs who survived the ghettos marched. Towards the end of the war, the evil Nazis led them to a large killing field on the banks of the Baltic River.

The march was led by the city’s rabbi, Rabbi David Shwedik, Chabad Shliach in Kaliningrad, Rabbi Avraham Baruch Deutsch, the city’s leaders and dignitaries, alongside ambassadors, representatives of the governors and the Jewish youth of the large city.