Putin decries Nazi ‘accomplices and henchmen,’ hints at spat with Poland
The Russian President spoke at the Fifth World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem, where he called for world to always remember lessons of Holocaust.
By JEREMY SHARONRussian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the World Holocaust Forum marking 75 years since the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz, at Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre in Jerusalem January 23, 2020(photo credit: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun)
Russian President Vladimir Putin made pointed remarks in his speech about Nazi collaborators in Europe who participated in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust during a speech he made at the Fifth World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on Thursday. His comments appear to be a continuation of his spat with Poland and its government over responsibility for the outbreak of the Second World War.“The crimes committed by the Nazis were deliberate and planned, and the ‘final solution of the Jewish question’ as they the called is one of the darkest and most shameful pages of modern world history,” said the Russian President during his speech.“But we will not forget that this crime also had accomplices who in their cruelty often excelled their masters. The death factories and concentration camps were operated not only by the Nazis, but also by their henchmen and accomplices in many European countries,” continued Putin.The Russian president mentioned the number of Jews killed in the territories of the former Soviet Union occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War and the Holocaust, pointing specifically to Lithuania but refraining from mentioning Poland.“In the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, where these bandits were operating, the largest number of Jews were killed. So, in Ukraine, about 1.4 million Jews died. Two hundred and twenty thousand people were killed in Lithuania. This is 95 percent of the pre-war Jewish population of this country. In Latvia - 77 thousand. Only a few hundred Latvian Jews survived the Holocaust,” said the Russian President.In Poland, approximately 89 percent of the country’s pre-war Jewish population was murdered, a fact Putin explicitly did not mention.Putin recently sparked a severe diplomatic crisis between Russia and Poland when he alleged that Poland was in part responsible for sparking World War II.Putin made his comments while defending the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression agreement in 1939, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in which Germany to the invasion of Poland from the West by Nazi Germany on September 1, and the invasion of Poland from the east by the Soviet Red Army two weeks later.The European Parliament recently criticized the Soviet Union for partial responsibility for the Second World War owing to the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, an act to which Putin took extreme umbrage, resulting in his accusations against Poland.Diplomatic tensions between Poland and Russia have risen sharply as a result.
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