(27.1.2015) PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Friends,

70 years ago, Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp where the Nazis slaughtered millions of people. By the decision of the United Nations Organisation this day, January 27, was declared International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Holocaust – one of the deadliest crimes against humanity – has become a symbol of grief and pain, of unbridled cruelty and neglect for human life.

It is hard to imagine that real death factories, mass shootings and deportations were a reality of the 20th century, that they were organised in cold blood in what then seemed to be a civilised Europe. Yes, they were planned, organised in cold blood. We have now seen the exhibition that you have seen as well – this was a planned, deliberate operation to destroy people. Incredibly simple.

However, as history has shown wherever ideas of ethnic or racial supremacy are put into people’s heads and the seeds of inter-ethnic hatred are sown, wherever traditional human values are destroyed and trampled upon, civilisation is quickly and inevitably replaced with barbarity, while peace is replaced with cruel conflicts, war and aggression.