Russia tried to monopolize the victory over Nazism, but failed

According to Ukraine’s National Remembrance Institute, some 300 exhibits will cast the light on the fates of our fellow countrymen (both prisoners of the Nazi concentration camp and the soldiers of the First Ukrainian Front, who liberated it). The display will include drawings and sketches by artist of the First Ukrainian Front, a Jew from Kyiv, Zinovii TOLKACHOV. He was one of the first to see Auschwitz after liberation, and this experience inspired his series of drawings “Oswiecim” and “The Flowers of Oswiecim.” The visitors will also see documentary materials concerning the liberators and prisoners of Oswiecim: POWs, participants of the Ukrainian liberation movement, Ostarbeiters, Ukrainian Jews, and former child prisoners.

The exhibit will be open at the Memorial Complex “National Museum of History of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45” (24 Lavrska Street, Kyiv).

On the eve of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the opening of the exhibition, The Day talked with director of the National Remembrance Institute Volodymyr Viatrovych about the concentration camp as a symbol of terror.

ZINOVII TOLKACHOV, HOPE. 1945

“First and foremost, the exhibit will be themed on the Ukrainian prisoners of Auschwitz: captured Red Army men, participants of the Ukrainian liberation movement, Ukrainian Jews, and Ostarbeiters. Also, given that this will be the 70th anniversary of the liberation, we tried to provide information on the Ukrainians who took part in the liberation of the inmates,” says Viatrovych. “The leitmotif of the exhibit is Zinovii Tolkachov’s drawings. Tolkachov, a Jew from Kyiv, was an artist at the First Ukrainian Front. Among other things, the display will include photos taken in the first days after the liberation and certain exhibits on Holocaust, provided by the Museum ‘Memory of the Jewish People and the Holocaust in Ukraine’ in Dnipropetrovsk.”

For the world, Auschwitz has come to symbolize the Holocaust, genocide, and terror. How important is it that Ukrainians remember the horrors of the concentration camp?

“It is extremely important to remember Nazism and the horrible crimes it brought. The Holocaust must be remembered, for it is another great crime committed on our land together with the Holodomor of the 1932-33. The Holocaust is the genocide of the Second World War. Remembrance is a guarantee that such crimes should never repeat again. This topic is of burning importance right now, when we again witness an aggression against Ukraine, and it can again be qualified as crime against humanity on the terrorist-controlled territory. It is crucially important that today we speak about the liberation of Auschwitz and the related events, for this year we will mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. And we must speak of the Ukrainian contribution to the victory over Nazis. We must speak of the Ukrainians who fought in the ranks of the Red Army, as well as the members of the underground nationalist resistance who also fought Nazism. We must not allow the Russian Federation to monopolize the victory and thus cover its present-day crimes which it commits on Ukraine’s ground.”

ZINOVII TOLKACHOV, OLD WOMEN AND CHILDREN. OSWIECIM. 1945

Researchers estimate that there could have been some 15,000 Ukrainian inmates in Auschwitz.

“This is the number which is used by scholars. However, the subject requires additional studies. The thing is that the inmates from Ukraine were generally identified by state. Therefore, they were registered as Poles or Russians. Only a small group of Ukrainian nationalists in Auschwitz were able to secure that the camp administration register them as Ukrainians.”

Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Grzegorz Schetyna stated that this concentration camp was basically liberated by Ukrainians.

“It was a very important and timely statement. I reiterate that today Russia is seeking to usurp the victory over Nazism. On our part, we must show that without Ukrainians in particular, and Europeans in general, this victory would have been impossible. And this is a fact. Today it is important to remember both Ukrainian inmates and Ukrainian liberators of Auschwitz. The more so that contemporary Russian propaganda (just as Soviet propaganda before it) often depicted Ukrainians as collaborators, which was far from true.”