Russia's World War II focus on Soviet casualties

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

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

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 as such. Its official title is “Monument to Soviet Civilians Victims of Nazi Genocide.”

I listen to a tour guide tell a group of school children 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 with dual historical significance for Russia. On this day in 1944, Soviet forces broke the nearly 900-day Siege of Leningrad. 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 about the Holocaust, but rather about the “genocide of the Soviet people.”

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

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

But in Russia today, there is a clear shift in focus, away from the Holocaust to how the Soviet people as a whole, including the Russian people, were exposed 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 went 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 industrial plan to kill, to eliminate, to wipe off the face of the earth a race: that was against the Jewish people. I think it's crucial to remember that the Holocaust was designed as a genocide of the Jewish people.”

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

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

Konstantin lives and works abroad. Back home, he was declared a “foreign agent,” a label often used to punish critics of the Russian authorities.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speaking in Krakow on 27 January 2005 he noted:

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

“It is our duty to remember the Holocaust,” he added.

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

Russian officials were not invited to Poland for 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 Siwinki wrote last September. “It is difficult to imagine the existence of a Russia that clearly does not understand the value of freedom.”

The decision not to extend an invitation to Moscow has been condemned by one of Russia's most influential Jewish leaders.

“Russia’s non-invitation is offensive 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 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, their different political systems and ideologies managed to unite… for a common victory.”

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

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

“That's why it's so important to let people know about events that happened over 80 years ago.”