Russia focuses World War II on Soviet casualties

On the edge of St. Petersburg is a dramatic monument more than 40 meters high. At the top is a photo of the mother with her children.

Below, true stories of human suffering are depicted in bronze.

At the bottom of some steps an eternal flame burns surrounded by the names of Nazi concentration and extermination camps.

Auschwitz, Sobibor, Belzec, Treblinka…

Terrifying words synonymous with the Holocaust.

However, this is not a Holocaust memorial per se. Its official title is “Monument to Soviet Civilians Victims of Nazi Genocide.”

I listen to a tour guide telling a group of schoolchildren about the Treblinka-2 extermination camp. There the Nazis killed up to 900,000 Jews.

“Treblinka-2 was a death camp where a large number of people were killed in gas chambers,” she says, without specifying that most of the victims were Jews.

Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled the memorial last year on January 27: a date of double historical significance for Russia. On this day in 1944, Soviet forces broke the Siege of Leningrad, which lasted nearly 900 days. Exactly one year later, the Red Army entered the gates of the Auschwitz death camp.

Because of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz, January 27 was later declared International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

But when he opened the memorial to Soviet civilians, Vladimir Putin spoke not of the Holocaust, but of “the genocide of the Soviet people.”

He said the Nazis’ goal was “to seize the natural resources and rich lands of our country, as well as to exterminate the majority of its citizens.”

This does not mean that Russia has remained silent about the Holocaust. In the run-up to the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, there were many Holocaust-related events across the country.

But in Russia today there is a clear shift in focus, away from the Holocaust and towards how the Soviet people as a whole, including the Russian people, suffered in World War II. More than 27 million Soviet citizens were killed in what is known here as the Great Patriotic War.

This change in focus has not gone unnoticed.

“No one disputes that there were millions of casualties during World War II,” Israel’s ambassador to Moscow, Simon Halperin, told me.

“But an artificial plan to kill a race, to wipe them out, to wipe them off the face of the earth: that was against the Jewish people. I think it’s important to remember that the Holocaust was designed to be a genocide of the Jewish people.”

Historian and researcher Konstantin Pakhalyuk says: “It is not because (the Russian authorities) do not want to talk about the Holocaust or the Jews.”

“The idea is to present the Russians as victims, so that we feel that we are victims: victims of the Western powers, victims in history. This is the basic idea of ​​this novel.”

Konstantin lives and works abroad. In his homeland, he was declared a “foreign agent,” a designation often used to punish critics of the Russian authorities.

He argues that the narrative of Russia as victim has become particularly strong since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“If you are a victim, you cannot take responsibility,” Mr. Pakaliuk says.

In the Soviet Union, there was little public discussion about the Holocaust and the systematic killing of European Jews by Hitler.

At the sites of the mass execution of Jews by the Nazis, on Soviet territory, there were few monuments or plaques indicating Jewish victims.

This began to change after the fall of communism. Russian officials began to speak proudly about the historical role their country played in defeating Hitler and saving the Jewish people from extermination.

Twenty years ago, President Putin was invited to visit Poland to participate in events commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Speaking in Krakow on 27 January 2005, he noted that:

“The Nazis chose Poland as the site of the planned genocide of the people and, above all, of the Jews… We see the Holocaust not only as a national tragedy for the Jewish people, but as a catastrophe for all of humanity.”

He added: “It is our duty to remember the Holocaust.”

Since then, Russia’s relations with Poland, Europe and the West in general have become increasingly tense, especially after Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russian officials were not invited to return to Poland to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

“This is the anniversary of liberation. We remember the victims, but we also celebrate freedom,” Auschwitz Museum director Piotr Cywinski wrote last September. “It is difficult to imagine a Russia that clearly does not understand the value of freedom.”

One of Russia’s most influential Jewish leaders condemned the decision not to extend an invitation to Moscow.

“Not inviting Russia is an insult to the memory of the liberators and their contribution to the victory over fascism,” Rabbi Alexander Boroda, head of the Union of Jewish Communities of Russia, said at a recent press conference in Moscow.

“It is a very bad sign because memory is important and there are shared values ​​that helped defeat fascism. Despite their differences, the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition and the different political systems and ideologies were able to unite… to achieve a common victory.”

Meanwhile, Jewish groups here are doing what they can to remind Russians of the past so it will never be repeated.

“The right wing is on the rise everywhere,” says Anna Bukshitskaya, executive director of the Russian Jewish Congress. “The number of Holocaust deniers is growing.”

“That’s why it’s so important to inform people about the events that happened more than 80 years ago.”