On January 27, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi took part in the commemoration of millions of victims of the Holocaust.
The head of state installed a lamp next to the memorial sign "Menorah" on the territory of the National Historical and Memorial Reserve "Babyn Yar". "Today, as always, Ukraine honours the memory of millions of victims of the Holocaust. We know and remember that indifference kills along with hatred. Indifference and hatred are always the only two capable of creating evil," said the Head of State in an address on the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Volodymyr Zelenskyi emphasized that everyone who values life should be decisive when it comes to saving those whom hatred seeks to destroy. "Today we repeat even more strongly than before: never again - hatred; never again - indifference. The more nations of the world overcome indifference, the less space there will be for hatred in the world," the President noted.
The head of the Office of the Head of State Andrii Yermak, and representatives of the diplomatic corps of European countries, the USA and Canada also took part in the ceremony. Volodymyr Zelenskyi thanked the diplomats for their participation in commemorating the victims of the Holocaust.
Today, January 27, the whole world celebrates the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. And this is the most difficult year for this date because, at this very time, Ukraine is again suffering from aggression. Innocent people are dying on the battlefield, on the streets of our cities and just in their homes. It would seem that our world is not divided into white and black, it has many halftones and nuances. But all this loses its meaning when it comes to the Holocaust. There can be no neutral position or compromise here, you either admit crimes or justify them, give them new meanings and silence the truth.
When you remain silent, you automatically become an accomplice to the crime, the same criminal behind all evil. Silence plays into the hands of only them, only the criminals and by no means the victim. Silence encourages the executioner, not the victim. It is hard to imagine that such a terrible crime against humanity could have happened in the modern world, not in the Middle Ages, but in the years in which we live. And that the world will silently watch it.
We have to intervene if people's lives and dignity are threatened in some city. A place where people are persecuted because of their nationality, race, religion or political opinion should become the centre of the universe in this difficult time for them. And when the voices of people dying in this fight against evil fall silent, our voices must wake up. Voices of the living. All victims need to know that they are not alone and that we remember them.
The hardest thing about these words is that they are not mine. And they are not talking about the present. They belong to Elie Wiesel, a writer, journalist and public figure who received the Nobel Prize in 1986. He was able to survive the horrors of the concentration camps, where he lost almost his entire family, and said these words at the award ceremony in Oslo.
As we can see, all his pain and despair are as relevant to our times as to those he lived through. Humanity did not conclude the tragedy of the Holocaust, and our priority goal with you is not to repeat the catastrophic scale of the tragedy, not to silence the crimes and remember at what price we get our freedom. Eternal memory to the fallen and boundless gratitude to the Ukrainian soldiers, who at this moment are doing everything so that the tragedy of the Holocaust will never happen again.
