RUSSIA | Nazi revival worries

Thursday, 26 January 2012

With economic turmoil growing and extreme-right political parties becoming more active, Russian officials are expressing concern about groups in some European countries attempting to revive and glorify Nazi ideology. “Russia attaches great importance to preserving the memory of millions of victims of WWII, including the Holocaust,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, has told an international conference in Moscow entitled “Never again: the memory of the Holocaust and prevention of crimes against humanity.”

“The erosion of moral standards cannot be tolerated when it comes to assessing the outcomes of that war,” he warned, adding that “attempts to rewrite the history of World War II in a way that acknowledges the rights of the hangmen alongside those of the victims, placing the occupiers alongside the liberators, are deeply immoral.”
Lavrov referred to the rise of “right-wing extremism” in some European states, where, he said, efforts are being made to transform “war criminals into heroes.” This disturbing trend naturally causes “deep concerns” in Russia.’

The Foreign Minister also pointed to the curriculum in some European schools, where the history textbooks “allot more space to the deeds of the Nazis…than to the Nuremberg Trials.” At the same time, “monuments to the victors over Nazism are being desecrated, while the invaders are being commemorated,” he said. In April 2007, the Estonian authorities made the decision to remove a World War II monument from the centre of Tallinn. The statue, a landmark known as the Bronze Soldier, also marked the graves of Soviet soldiers who had sacrificed their lives in the fight against fascism. That decision sparked massive protests, in which one person was killed and dozens wounded in the Estonian capital. Speaking out against these alarming incidences in Europe remains one of Russia’s foreign policy priorities, Lavrov stressed. “The imperative of the present day should not be an appeal to phantoms of the past but, on the contrary, inspiring a…common response to the challenges of a rapidly changing world.” Russia lost an estimated 27 million people in its World War II struggle against Hitler fascism.