Yad Vashem admits mistakes during Holocaust commemorations

Text by: Guilhem Delteil Follow

It is a rare step that the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem has just undertaken. On January 23, Yad Vashem hosted a great commemoration on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp. But the institution has just written a letter to apologize. She acknowledges errors in the presentation of events on this page of history during the ceremony.

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From our correspondent in Jerusalem ,

The World Holocaust Forum met this year at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. And the Israeli president had invited fifty heads of state and government. This ceremony was intended to be a strong moment of commemoration , a powerful reminder of this genocide, at a time when anti-Semitism is regaining intensity throughout the world. But during the ceremony, several videos were shown to remind the story. And it is these films which contained, estimates Yad Vashem, " a certain number of inaccuracies which led to a partial and unbalanced presentation of the historical facts ".

Wrong cards

The director of the research center located within the International Institute for the Holocaust remembers that these videos did not recall “ the division of Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union or the conquest of the 'Western Europe in 1940 '. In addition, notes Professor Dan Michman, the maps also included errors: the borders of Poland were poorly drawn and certain concentration camps were presented as extermination camps.

By apologizing, the director of the Yad Vashem research center takes some responsibility. But in his letter, he also recalls that the ceremony was organized by the Foundation for the World Holocaust Forum, an organization led by Moshe Kantor . Moshe Kantor is a Russian businessman, an oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, whose role in the organization of this event - notably financial - is the subject of criticism. Faced with controversy, the office of the Israeli president made it clear on Tuesday evening that the government had spent 22 million shekels, nearly 5.8 million euros, to receive these fifty leaders from around the world. Dinner, the day before the ceremony, was notably paid for entirely by the presidency, insists the office of Reuven Rivlin. However, he said nothing about the ceremony itself.

Memorial tussle between Warsaw and Moscow

Yad Vashem's press release does not explicitly emphasize this, but it denounces the " efforts to obscure and distort political discourse in different countries ". Without being directly named, Vladimir Putin is well targeted. Vladimir Putin is engaged in a memorial showdown with Poland, presenting his country as a liberating force - or even as the only liberating force - against Nazism. Poland emphasizes that the invasion of its territory in 1939 by the USSR and Germany kicked off the Second World War. And its president had also boycotted the ceremony of Yad Vashem because he had not had the right to speak while Vladimir Putin, him, was invited to deliver a speech.

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