Putin Sends Message To Mark 80th Anniversary Of Auschwitz Liberation

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has stressed the role of the Red Army in the liberation of Auschwitz, in a message marking the freeing of the Nazi death camp 80 years ago.

It had been the Red Army that had exposed the truth of Nazi crimes to humanity, Putin wrote.

“And we will always recall that it was the Soviet soldier that defeated this terrible total evil and secured victory, the greatness of which will forever remain in world history,” Putin wrote.

Russian representatives were not invited to official events in Poland marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on account of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Poland and other supporters of Ukraine of attempting to sully the memory of the heroic deeds of the Red Army and to destroy monuments.

Russian diplomats based in Kraków had wished to lay a wreath at a memorial cemetery for the Soviet soldiers who fell during the liberation of Auschwitz, including the many Jews among them, Zakharova said.

Speaking at Moscow’s Jewish Museum, German Ambassador Alexander Graf Lambsdorff recalled Nazi crimes. Germany was facing up to its historical responsibility, he said.

Lambsdorff also paid tribute to the victims of the Siege of Leningrad that ended on January 27, 1944 and was one of the Wehrmacht armed forces’ worst war crimes.

Marking the day, Putin laid red roses on the grave of his brother Viktor, who died during the siege, at the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery in St Petersburg, as Leningrad is known today.