UWC marks 80th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation, honors the memory of Holocaust victims

On January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) and global Ukrainian communities honor the memory of the 6 million Jewish victims executed and tortured by the Nazis, including nearly 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews.

We pray for all the innocent lives taken by the murderous totalitarian Nazi regime, which cultivated hatred, racism, and xenophobia. We also pay tribute to those who risked their lives to save innocent victims doomed to death.

Eighty years ago today, soldiers from the Soviet Red Army’s 1st Ukrainian Front, primarily composed of Ukrainians, liberated Auschwitz – a Nazi concentration and extermination camp in occupied Poland where more than a million people were murdered as part of the Nazis’ “final solution” to the “Jewish question”. On January 27, 1945, soldiers of the 100th Lviv Rifle Division’s battalion led by Anatoly Shapiro, a Ukrainian of Jewish origin from Poltava, were the first to open the gates of the main camp.

As commemoration events occur worldwide, Ukraine approaches the third anniversary of the Russian Federation’s full-scale brutal and genocidal invasion. The brave Ukrainian people continue their fight for freedom and sovereignty against the deadly Russian terrorist state.

Just like the Nazis, Putin’s authoritarian regime hides its imperialistic ambitions and dreams of “global domination” behind disinformation, lies, and criminal propaganda. With appalling cynicism, the Russians have been distorting and manipulating the memory of the Holocaust and the Second World War to justify their rapacious invasion of Ukraine.

The hatred that Russian occupiers have brought to Ukrainian soil after almost 80 years since the victory over Nazism in Europe has shocked the world. The massacres in Bucha, Izium, and Mariupol, multiple sadistic atrocities committed by the Russian armed forces throughout Ukraine’s occupied territories, and the deliberate bombing of residential buildings, hospitals, and even memorial sites like the Babyn Yar National Memorial in Kyiv and the Drobytsky Yar Memorial in Kharkiv, must not go unanswered. The perpetrators must be held accountable.

While honoring the victims of the Holocaust, we call on all peace-loving nations to unite their efforts to help the Ukrainian people stop the Russian evil and defend the free world from descending into authoritarian darkness once again.

Just like Nazism, Putinism must be stopped.