Statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the OSCE Permanent Council (21 January 2016)

Mr. Chairperson,

At the outset, allow me to thank the speakers for their statements on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Having lost almost one third of its population in the course of the Second World War, Belarus has never considered the grief of the Jewish people as separate from its own – the Holocaust was a shared tragedy.

In the Trostenets death camp near Minsk alone – the fourth largest in Europe – more than 200,000 people were exterminated, including Jews from the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Austria, Poland and other European countries. Trostenets belongs in the same dark place as Auschwitz, Majdanek and Treblinka.

Belarusians risked their lives to save thousands of Jews from impending death. More than 700 Belarusians were honoured with the title Righteous Among the Nations for their heroism.

Belarus makes targeted efforts to preserve the memory of the Holocaust victims. Around 600 Holocaust memorials have been erected in Belarus, including with the support of Jewish social organizations. The Yama (pit) memorial was established on the site of the Minsk ghetto.

One of the most significant recent events was the opening on 22 June 2015 of the “Memory gate” memorial site where the Trostenets concentration camp once stood. The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, said in a statement delivered at the meeting and memorial service on that occasion, that the Trostenets memorial symbolized the repudiation of the inhumane Nazi policies towards the peaceful inhabitants of Europe as a whole.

Belarus is working with other European countries to immortalize the memory of the Holocaust victims. For example, this week in Minsk, the Austrian historian Hubert Steiner gave Belarus copies of the deportation lists from the Austrian State archives with the names of the Austrian Jews – more than 10,000 in all – who were exterminated by the Nazis in Trostenets during the Second World War.

I should like to take this opportunity to invite everyone who cares about remembering the Holocaust to visit this and other Second World War memorials in Belarus.

Mr. Chairperson,

While preserving the memory of the victims of fascism, we must take a resolute stand against aggressive nationalism and neo-fascism, neo-Nazi ideology, attempts at propaganda and the cultivation of racist ideas, anti-Semitism, the incitement of xenophobia and religious intolerance. We must not allow the historical truth about this major tragedy of the past to be misrepresented.

The 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War which we commemorated last year should serve as a reminder of the importance of consolidating the international community’s efforts to build up a strong immunity to the virus of Nazism and any of its manifestations.

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.
 

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