On January 27, a service and a candle-lighting ceremony were held in Kyiv on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Representatives of the Jewish community, Ukrainian authorities and foreign guests took part in the event.

During the Second World War, the genocide organized by the Nazi regime led to murder of a third of all Jews in the world and representatives of a number of other nationalities. It was on January 27, 1945, that the world's largest death camp, Auschwitz, was liberated. More than a million Jews, as well as representatives of other nationalities, were killed there.

"There is almost no piece of land in Ukraine that was not covered in Jewish blood during the Second World War. The national memory of Ukraine carries the memory of all genocides, of the great dramas of the 20th century - the Holodomor of 1932-1933, the Holocaust, the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. And from now on, our memory included the tragedies of the beginning of the 21st century: the confrontation with russia, russia's bloody unprovoked war against us. The parallels between history and the present are obvious: the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and the genocidal war of the rashists against Ukrainians, against all peoples who inhabit Ukraine. If the lessons of history remain unlearned, people are doomed to relearn them. Eternal memory to all victims of the Holocaust. Never again," said Oleksandr Tkachenko, Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine.

The extermination of an entire nation today seems impossible in the civilized world—an absolute evil. It was fought against during the Second World War, and the civilized world continues to fight against it today. Now this evil has its own face and a russian passport.