PM on the 70th anniversary of the commemoration of the Holocaust Victims: Memory of the past is the key to the future
On
Tuesday, January 27, on the 70th anniversary of the commemoration of the Holocaust victims, Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk visited an exhibition opened yesterday “The Auschwitz Concentration Camp – the Ukrainian Dimension” at the memorial complex “National Museum of the History of the Great
Patriotic War of 1941-1945.”
Arseniy Yatsenyuk underlined that on that day 70 years ago soldiers of the Lviv and Zhytomyr divisions as part of the First Ukrainian front liberated Auschwitz from the Nazis – “one of the most terrible camps of World War II, where millions of our fellow Jews had been tortured.”
He
noted that over 6 million of Jews were victims of the Holocaust: “And this is the terrible lesson of history that should be the basis for building the future. Never allow the torture of a
man, do everything in order to preserve peace and to punish the responsible.”
“Together we destroyed Nazism. And everything that will infringe upon human dignity and human life must be destroyed. Our memory, our common respect
and sorrow to those millions who were the Holocaust victims, millions of Jews, millions of Ukrainians who were victims of Nazism and Stalinism must be the key to a strong state, united nation and strong future for Ukraine,” Arseniy Yatsenyuk underlined.
"I bow my head in front of millions of the Holocaust
victims. And I’m drawing attention to the victory of the Ukrainian soldiers who liberated Auschwitz and who fought against Nazism," he said.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk called unacceptable the today’s attempts of the revisionism of World War II and the statement “that Russia would have
won World War II without Ukraine”: “Millions of Ukrainians side by side with other nations fought against Nazism. And we insist on respecting history, respecting those who destroyed “the plague” in Europe.”
While
visiting the exhibition, a guide drew the Prime
Minister’s attention to the photo of Petro Mirchuk. Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that he was his relative on the paternal line: “He had been at the Auschwitz Nazi camp for three years. He was a Ukrainian historian, fighter for Ukrainian independence.”
The
Prime Minister wrote down in the Book of honored visitors: “Memory of the past is the key to the future.”