Remarks by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia on International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Dear Holocaust survivors,
Mr. Secretary-General,
Madam President of the General Assembly,
Your excellencies, Colleagues Ambassadors,
Dear Rabbi Schnier and Elizabeth,
Ladies and gentlmen, dear friends,
We have gathered today to honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, which was the genocide of the Jewish people perpetrated by the Nazis as part of their terrible ideology of racial supremacy that divided the entire world into “superior Aryans” and so-called “Untermenschen,” or subhumans.
According to this misanthropic ideology, the “Untermenschen” were expected to surrender their place in society, their property, their right to speak their native language and practice their religion, as well as their right to receive an education or run business, their land, and ultimately their lives. They were expected to surrender all this to the superhuman representatives of the “Aryan race,” to which the German Nazis and a number of their collaborators purported to belong.
We must not forget that it was not overnight that this hideous ideology had taken its shape, or, more likely, its form of the so-called “Final Solution” with its gas chambers and crematorium ovens, which stunned human conscience, where women, the elderly, and infants were burned. It all began with racial laws that divided people on ethnic and religious grounds. These were the laws rooted in racial theories and practices of then-thriving colonialism. That is why we must prevent the resurgence of any doctrines of supremacy or any legislation that discriminates against people on ethnic, linguistic, or racial grounds.
The peoples of Russia know firsthand what the Holocaust was like. Not less than one-third of its victims were Soviet nationals. It was on the territory of the USSR and Poland that the horrifying death factories were located, and it was there that large-scale actions were carried out to physically exterminate Jews, as well as Slavs, Roma, and people of other nationalities.
Today we also commemorate the 82nd anniversary of the lifting of the 900-day blockade of Leningrad, where Nazis essentially carried out a genocidal policy of starving the city's residents to death.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The easternmost Jewish ghetto was established by the Nazis on the territory of the USSR in July 1941 in the village of Ilyino, which at that time was part of the Smolensk region of Russia.
Upon entering the village, the invaders resettled the Jewish population – about two hundred people in total – to a separate street and enclosed their houses with barbed wire. The captives were given nearly no food at all, but they were mercilessly forced into performing hard physical labor. For the other villagers, who had never categorized their neighbors by nationality and had never heard the word “ghetto” before, this new measure was both terrifying and barbaric. Tricking the guards and risking their own lives, they brought food and clothing to their imprisoned fellow-villagers. Their solidarity was the only thing that helped the ghetto residents carry on.
The harsh Russian winter of 1942 was in full swing. January brought severe frost. One day, guards came for the residents of the ghetto. Without giving them time to get dressed properly, Nazis forced the people out into the street and led them to the place of execution. The frightened, barely-clothed crowd, mostly consisting of women, children, and the elderly, spent many hours out in the cold before being told that, due to some delay, the execution would be postponed until the next morning.
After spending the night awaiting their inevitable death, and hearing gunfire at dawn, condemned residents were convinced that their time had come. However, the sounds reaching their ears turned out to be the sounds of a battle that brought salvation: on the morning of January 25, soldiers of the 252nd Rifle Division drove the Nazis out of the village, thus putting an end to the existence of the Ilyino ghetto. Victory was still far away at that point, but this liberation gave people the gift of life.
The Red Army played a decisive role in destroying the Nazi regime, smashing it in its lair – in Berlin – thus ending the policy of the Holocaust, which mercilessly annihilated people everywhere from the small village of Ilyino to the Auschwitz death factory.
We have gathered today on Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27. This date is forever etched in the memory of Russians who cherish the memories of the Great Patriotic War. On January 27, 1945, Red Army troops entered Auschwitz – the largest of the Nazi death camps – and brought long-awaited freedom to more than 7,000 of its remaining prisoners. About 200 Red Army soldiers died that day. Such was the cost of the fierce battle that Soviet commanders decisively chose to fight without the use of artillery. The Red Army knew that there were not only enemies behind the camp walls but also prisoners.
It is vital that history preserve the truth about each and every one of the horrific crimes of Nazism, and that no reasoning ever be used to justify these crimes or their perpetrators today. It is also vital to prevent glorification of Nazism, which is something that we are unfortunately observing today. That is why our country annually submits a UNGA resolution entitled “Combating the glorification of Nazism.”
Thank you.
