Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will take part in events at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow on Monday timed to International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
"In the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu will together take part in events on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day and an anniversary of Leningrad’s full liberation from Nazi siege," the Kremlin’s press service said in a statement.
Later in the day, a stone of a memorial to those who took part in the Resistance movement in Nazi concentration camps will be laid on the territory of the museum. According to Alexander Boroda, the museum’s Director General and President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, the stone was brought from the place of execution of Jews in Russia’s western Smolensk Region.
"We have brought a symbolic stone from the place of execution of Jews in the area close to Lyubavichi, in the Smolensk Region. That will be a symbolic stone of the future monument we will announce a tender on. It will be held according to all the rules, with technical specifications sent to sculptors. Then we will invite a panel of judges and make a choice," Boroda said.
An exhibition dedicated to the history of the 1943 Sobibor death camp uprising will open on Monday as well. "We have prepared an exhibition dedicated to the Sobibor uprising. The history of Sobibor is unique, this uprising made it possible to save hundreds of people. A lot has been done to perpetuate the memory of this uprising. However, that’s not enough, and we deemed it necessary to make an exposition dedicated to this event," he stressed.
Taking part in the commemorative events will be Chief Rabbi of Russia Berl Lazar, President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia Alexander Boroda, Russian officials, representatives of international organizations, diplomatic missions and descendants of Nazi camps’ prisoners.
"Death factories": History and Memory
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked, in accordance with a UN decision, on January 27, the day when the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland in 1945 where more than 1.1 million people, including about 1 million Jews, were murdered. Historians estimate that the total number of Holocaust victims exceeds 6 million people.
The Sobibor concentration camp was in operation from May 1942 to October 1943. According to various estimates, from 150,000 to 250,000 Jews from Poland and other European countries were killed in its gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. The camp ceased to exist after the prisoners’ uprising led by Soviet officer Alexander Pechersky.
