Russian Views of the Holocaust

"Such lies are intended to accuse the Jews themselves of the most horrific crimes in history that were committed against them."

"The use of the Holocaust of the Jewish people for political purposes must stop immediately."

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett

 

"When they say 'What sort of nazification is this if we are Jews', well, I think that Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it means nothing."

"For a long time now we've been hearing the wise Jewish people say that the biggest anti-Semites are the Jews themselves."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

 

"[The Russian minister's remarks were] an insult and a severe blow to the victims of the real Nazism."

"[Lavrov was spreading ] an antisemitic conspiracy theory with no basis in fact."

Dani Dayan, former Israeli Ambassador to the UN, now Chairman of Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, Israel

President Zelensky reacted to Mr Lavrov's words in his nightly video address  Reuters

 

Russia's persecution of Jews is an issue of long standing from Czarist Russia relegating Russian Jews to the Pale of Settlement, a hostile environment for Jews was always the remedy for their presence. Russian Jews campaigned to leave the Soviet Union as 'refuseniks' to be allowed to emigrate and find homes for themselves anywhere else where they might realize freedom and security, whether settling in greater Europe, North America, or returning to Israel.

Under Russia's Vladimir Putin, Israel managed an uneasy alliance with Russia politically, appealing to Putin to overlook Israel's dire need to defend itself from the malign intentions of the very regimes that the Kremlin was courting in re-establishing a presence in the Middle East. That courtesy alliance negotiated between former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin granted Israel a blind eye by the Russian military when Israel flew missions over Syria to destroy weapons depots provided by the Islamic State of Iran to Hezbollah and the Assad regime.

That delicate balancing act, that managed amicability, faltered then came to a thudding halt when Israel was forced to battle its conscience in restraining its compulsion to criticize Moscow over its criminal invasion of Ukraine with all the war crimes being committed in the wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure, the bombing of schools, medical facilities, hospitals and apartment buildings along with wanton mass murder, a reprise of Russian support of the Syrian regime destroying the lives of Syrian Sunnis.

The more ghastly the crimes of the Russian military under direction of their president, the more difficult it became for Israel to seem to remain neutral. Israel, along with the rest of the world knew full well that Vladimir Putin's claims of rescuing Ukrainians from the Nazi thugs that formed their government was a gross slander to cover its territorial ambitions. When, finally, Israel could no longer sustain its effort at neutrality, Russia was quick to strike back.

In this Dec. 5, 1931 photo, Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialists, is saluted as he leaves the party’s Munich headquarters (AP Photo, File)

Criticizing Israel for responding to Palestinian terrorist tactics on the Temple Mount during Ramadan by using tear gas and stun guns to stop the criminal activity with the aim of protecting peaceful Muslim attendees at the al-Aqsa mosque which had been turned into a reservoir for rubble and incendiary devices thrown from its sacred precincts at the security police attempting to re-establish order and security. Accusing Israel of aligning itself with the Ukrainian Nazis fighting Russian invaders in protection of their homeland.

And finally insinuating that Jews were Nazis themselves, responsible themselves for the outcome of the Third Reich-organized institutionalized obliteration of Jewish lives in a fascist-German drive to cleanse Europe of the presence of Jews whom the German fascists likened to sub-humans, a pestilence whose presence sullied the Nordic ideal of humanity by their Semitic roots, religion and culture. But the obscenity of the Holocaust was no one's fault but the Jews, he intimated; self-loathing Jews.

A German in a military uniform shoots at a Jewish woman after a mass execution in Mizocz, Ukraine. In October of 1942, the 1,700 people in the Mizocz ghetto fought with Ukrainian auxiliaries and German policemen who had intended to liquidate the population. About half the residents were able to flee or hide during the confusion before the uprising was finally put down. The captured survivors were taken to a ravine and shot. Photo provided by Paris' Holocaust Memorial

Lavrov had been asked in an interview on Italian television how he justified describing Ukraine as a fascist, neo-Nazi nation, when its duly elected president was himself Jewish. And his response was that this was totally irrelevant, since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was merely following the precedent of other Jews before him, who were not pacifist, freedom-loving people, but raving fascists whose pursuit of eliminating Jews was simply what Jews do.

Conspiracy theorists throughout the years prior to and following World War II and the ascension of Hitler's 'Social Democratic Party' of Germany speculated that Hitler had Jewish blood, bequeathed to him by a grandparent, a teen who had impregnated a housemaid who became the mother of Hitler's father. Hitler's evasion over his birth and background likely stemmed from shame over the fact that his father was illegitimate, not of Jewish heritage. Hitler took inspiration from the Russia-produced tome The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

They had much in common, the Communist Soviet Union and the Third Reich; both focused on Jews and the nuisance factor of their presence, upsetting the world order through their claims of superiority as a civilized cultural/ethnic/religious people seeking to control world banking, communications, industry, academia, earning the scorn and contempt of their betters, the Nazis and the Fascist Communists.

Sergei Lavrov was asked how Russia could claim it was fighting to "de-Nazify" Ukraine  EPA