Standing on the edge of St. Petersburg is a 40 -meter -high monument. At the top is the figure of a mother and her children.

Below is described by bronze is the true story of human suffering.

The bottom of some steps burns eternal flames, surrounded by the names of the Nazi concentration camp and extinction camp.

Oswelins, Sobelgs, Bell Tetz, Treblinca …

Terrible words and massacre synonymous.

However, this is not a Massacre Memorial. Its official name is “the Nazi Extinction victims of the Soviet Civilian Monument”.

I listened to the guide to a group of children telling the situation of the No. 2 extinction of Treblinca 2. Nazis slaughtered as many as 900,000 Jews there.

“Treblinka No. 2 is a death camp, and a large number of people are killed in the gas room,” she said, but there was no specific explanation that most victims were Jews.

Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled the monument on January 27 last year: this day has double historical significance to Russia. On the day of 1944, the Soviet army broke the siege of Leningrad for nearly 900 days. One year later, the Red Army entered the gate of the Oswing Camp to Camp.Essence

It is precisely because of the Red Army’s liberation of Oswitin that he was announced as an international massacre on January 27.

But when Vladimir Putin opened a monument to the Soviet civilians, he did not talk about the massacre, but “the racial extinction of the Soviet people.”

He believes that the goal of the Nazis is to “seize my country’s rich natural resources and territory and eliminate most of its citizens.”

This is not to say that Russia remains silent about the massacre. On the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Oswitin concentration camp, there were many incidents related to the massacre across the country.

But today’s Russia has a significant change in focus, shifting from the massacre to the suffering of the entire Soviet people, including the Russian people, in the Second World War. More than 27 million Soviet citizens were killed in the great Patriotic War.

This key change has not been ignored.

“No one thinks there are millions of victims during World War II,” the Israeli ambassador to Moscow Simon Halpelin told me.

“But an industrialization plan that killed, eliminated, and erased a race from the surface of the earth: This is aimed at the Jewish people. I think it is important to remember that the purpose of the Holocaust is to extinct the race of the Jewish people.”

“This is not because (Russian authorities) do not want to talk about the massacre or Jews,” said historian and researcher Constantine Pahalikuk.

“This idea is to depict the Russians as victims, which makes us feel that we are victims: victims of Western powers, victims in history. This is the core idea of ​​this narrative.”

Constantine lives and work abroad. In China, he was announced as a “foreign agent”, and this label was often used to punish the critics of the Russian authorities.

He believes that since the outbreak of the Russian and Ukraine War, Russia has become particularly strong as a victim.

“If you are a victim, you can’t bear responsibility,” Mr. Pahalik said.

In the Soviet Union, few people publicly discussed the massacre and Hitler’s systemic murder against European Jews.

In the Soviet territory, Jewish places were rejected on a large -scale Nazi scale, and the monument or plaque of the Jewish victims was hardly mentioned.

After the collapse of communism, this situation began to change. Russian officials began to proudly talk about the historical role of Russia in defeating Hitler and saving the Jews to avoid extermination.

Twenty years ago, President Putin was invited to Poland to participate in the 60th anniversary of the Liberation of the Oswing Concentration Camp.

On January 27, 2005, he pointed out in Clarkov:

“Nazi chooses Poland as a place where the plan is planted on a large scale, especially the Jews … We think that the Holocaust is not only the national tragedy of the Jewish, but also a disaster for all mankind.”

“Remembering the massacre is our responsibility,” he added.

Since then, Russia has increasingly tense relations with Poland, Europe, and West, especially after Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russian officials have not been invited to return to Poland to participate in the 80th anniversary of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Oswell Camp.

“This is the anniversary of liberation. We remember the victims, but we also celebrate freedom,” the curator of the Oswelin Museum, Peter Sevinsky, wrote last September last year. “It’s hard to imagine the existence of Russia, it obviously does not understand the value of freedom.”

One of Russia’s most influential Jewish leaders condemned the decision not to invite Moscow.

Russia’s Jewish Community Federation Chairman Rabialshan Boloda recently said at a press conference held in Moscow: “Do not invite Russia to be the memory of the liberator and the offending their contribution to the defeat of Fascism.”

“This is a very bad sign, because memory is important, and it has the common values ​​of helping to defeat fascism. Despite the differences, the countries, different political systems and ideological methods of the anti -Hitler Alliance are united … For the common victory “.”

At the same time, the Jewish groups here are doing their best to remind Russians’ past things so that they can no longer repeat them.

Anna Bokshitskaya, the executive director of the Russian Jewish conference, said: “Right -wing forces in various places are rising.

“This is why people know about incidents more than 80 years ago.”