KRAKOW, January 27. /TASS/. Head of the administration of the Russian president Sergey Ivanov heads a Russian delegation to Oswiecim to attend commemoration events on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of prisoners of Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp.
Sergey Ivanov, who arrived in Krakow on Tuesday, said that he would pay homage to the Soviet soldiers who liberated Poland during WWII.
"I want to bow my head in memory of all those killed, including 600,000 Soviet soldiers who were killed when liberating Poland from Nazis during WWII, this is my sacred duty," Ivanov told journalists in Krakow from where he will move on to Oswiecim. Sergey Ivanov is planning to lay a wreath at the Wall of Death WWII memorial and visit a permanent Russian exposition titled "Tragedy. Valor. Liberation."
"As a symbol of commemoration Oswiecim is one of the most horrible pages in the history of mankind which embodies all the horrors of Nazism and underlines the role of the Soviet Union and its Red Army which put an end to this nightmare," Ivanov said. He compared the Nazi concentration camp with Holocaust, saying that "more than a million ethnic Jews were tortured to death and killed in Oswiecim."
The Russian delegation, which is attending WWII commemoration events in Oswiecim, includes WWII veterans who took part in the liberation of the concentration camp, former Auschwitz prisoners, representatives of religious confessions and public organizations.
"The participation of the Russian delegation in the commemoration events is meant to emphasize deep respect of the Russian people and its leadership for the memories of the victims of Nazism and all those who sacrificed their life in the struggle for freedom of the mankind," the Kremlin administration said in a statement.