Opening remarks by the Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov at the Exhibition
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great honour for me to be speaking here at the UN Headquarters at the opening of historical and documental exhibition “Holocaust: Annihilation, Liberation and Rescue”.
This exhibition is opening on the eve of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day marked annually on 27 January.
First of all, I would like to thank the Scientific Outreach Center of Holocaust, its co-chair Ilya Alexandrovich Altman, Russian Jewish Congress for organizing this exhibition, which contains unique archival documental evidence of the terrible tragedy of Holocaust, photographs of the prisoners of Nazi death camps and the liberators - soldiers of the Red Army.
Holocaust is one of the worst crimes against humanity, manifestation of the merciless cruelty and contempt to the value of life.
The mass annihilation of the Jews by Nazis as well as the representatives of other ethnic groups is a result of the hateful policy of racial supremacy come into life.
Our sacred duty is not only to commemorate millions of innocent victims but to do everything in our power to prevent such tragedies in the future. It can not be but troubling that recently we see the creeping rehabilitation of Nazism. In a number of countries including those who consider themselves to be paragons of democracy there is a systemic course for a revision of the outcomes of the Second World War, which includes qualification of the Hitler activities and local collaborationists.
It is especially immoral with a number of the EU member countries are waging a war on the monuments where they destroy and defy monuments to Soviet soldiers who paid their lives to rid the world of the horrors of the “brown plague” who have brought this decisive input in the insuring the long years of peace and stability on the European continent.
Such actions are sacrilege from the human common stand point. They challenge the past-war architecture of security which is underpin by the UN Charter, decisions of the Nurnberg Tribunal and other inviolable international human rights documents. We all should decisively counter such very dangerous trends.
Russia pays special attention to these issues and yearly we introduce to the UN General Assembly a draft special resolution on fight against heroization of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other forms of racism and intolerance. The number of countries who act as co-sponsors of this resolution grows year to year. Yet again we have adopted such a resolution one month ago on December 19th , 2017 at the plenary session of the 72nd session of the General Assembly. This document was endorsed by an overwhelming majority of the countries. However, a number of countries did not support it, trying to reference and justify their position by the need to respect the freedom of speech.
I believe that today’s exhibition is called to yet again send inambiguous signal that such efforts to re-interpret Nazism are absolutely unacceptable. In the coming months this exhibition will be shown in a number of other countries. I am confident that this work will solidify historical truth and will remind once again about the feat of value of those who defeated Nazism, saved Jews and other nations from full annihilation.
And in the end I would like to wish all the best, I would like to wish health, first and foremost, to the veterans to those who were saving Jews and liberating Auschwitz and those who helped to save us all.
And I would like to welcome here my good friend, Mr. Schneier, who is the rock in the New York political life, who is doing a lot to prevent heroization of Nazism and those who committed those horrible crimes.
Thank you and all the best.
