JERUSALEM, January 23. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the Holocaust as "one of the darkest and most disgraceful pages in modern history." However, he has noted that memory of this tragedy can become a lesson and a warning for future generations but only if it is preserved uncensored.

"Crimes committed by Nazis, their though-out and planned Final Solution to the Jewish Question, as they called it, is <…> one of the darkest and most disgraceful pages in modern history," Putin addressed attendees of the fifth World Holocaust Forum entitled "Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism". He underlined, "Memory of the Holocaust will be a lesson and a warning only in case it is preserved intact, without reservations and omissions."

The Russian president emphasized the fact that the attendees of the forum honoring Holocaust victims are united by common responsibility, duty to the past and the future. "We mourn all victims of the Nazism, including six million Jews decimated in ghettos and concentration camps and slaughtered in punitive operations. Forty percent of those were citizens of the Soviet Union. Therefore, the Holocaust has been and will be a terrible wound for us, a tragedy that we will always remember," Putin stressed.

 

Shocked by what they saw

 

Putin revealed that before his trip to Jerusalem he read through authentic documents - reports of Red Army officers written after the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. "It was very hard, unbearable even, to read these military communiques and documents detailing the way the camp was organized and how the machine of cold-blooded extermination of people was operating," he admitted. "Many of them are hand-written by Red Army soldiers and officers two-three days after prisoners were liberated and convey the shock experienced by soldiers and officers of the Red Army from what they saw, from evidence evoking pain, outrage and compassion."

He added that Red Army Marshal Ivan Konev who was in charge of the operation to take control of the then densely populated Silesian Industrial Region of Germany employed the tactics allowing the troops to save as many civilian lives as possible. After he received a report on horrors and atrocities taking place inside Auschwitz, he forbade himself from even taking a glimpse of the camp. He later wrote in memoir, "I could not then lose my mental strength, allow the just sense of revenge to blind me when advancing military operations and cause more suffering and victims among Germany’s peaceful population."

 

 

Purposeful extermination

 

The Russian leader recalled that the 75th anniversary of the liberation Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp is commemorated on January 27 this year. "Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people of various nationalities died in this hell where people from different countries were herded in for torture, atrocious experiments and mass extermination. Among them Jews make up more than 50%," he said. "However, let’s not forget that this crime had its accomplices, collaborators. They often surpassed their masters in violence." Putin pointed out that death camps were maintained not only by Nazis but also their collaborators in many European countries.

"The biggest number of Jews were slaughtered in the occupied Soviet territories where these criminals were wreaking havoc. For instance, approximately 1.4 million Jews lost their lives in Ukraine, 220,000 people were exterminated in Lithuania. This, I draw your attention dear friends, is 95% of the Jewish population of this country before the war. In Latvia, 77,000 people [were killed] and so on. Only a few hundreds of Latvian Jews survived the Holocaust," Putin shared these shocking figures.

"The Holocaust is an act of deliberate annihilation of people. However, we must remember that Nazis were preparing the same demise for many other nations," the Russian leader said. "Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles and representatives of many other nations were declared Untermensch (subhuman - TASS). Their native lands were meant to serve as living space for Nazis ensuring their bountiful existence, while Slavic and other nations were destined to be either exterminated or become slaves deprived of any rights without their own culture, collective memory and language."

 

Price of victory

 

Putin addressed the audience reminding them that it was primarily the Soviet people that spelled the end of the barbaric plans in 1945. "It [Soviet nation] defended its fatherland and liberated Europe from Nazism. To achieve this, we paid the price that has never even been seen in nightmares by any other nation - 27 million deaths. We will never forget this," Putin pledged.