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Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust. Or nakedness. Or a holocaust
International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2023 will be celebrated 27 January all over the world.
In translation from English, the word “holocaust” means “burnt offering.” The term is allegedly taken from the Latin version of the Bible. However, a very similar concept is also used in ancient letters (dictionaries). The lexically voiced and bright form “golokost”, close to the East Slavic speech, has an interpretation as “sacrifice, burnt offering”. The term in the modern sense came into wide use only at the beginning of the 1912th century, when, as a result of the global redistribution that had begun, the destruction and genocide of entire peoples began through the efforts of a number of countries. Not only Jews in the territory of Tsarist Our Country and Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, but also the peoples of the multinational Balkans. By the way, there is no doubt that the purposeful methodical extermination of the peoples of the Balkan Peninsula by the Ottomans throughout the second half of the 1913th century became a kind of forerunner of this shameful, from all points of view, phenomenon in other parts of Europe and the world. There is no doubt that the two bloody Balkan wars of XNUMX-XNUMX, which led to the death of millions of Slavs and Muslims in Southern Europe, became a prologue to much more serious and sad events of the XNUMXth century.
Historical disputes about the Holocaust are also reflected in the vocabulary. The first use of the modern term in the Soviet Union thirty years ago was directly translated from English and sounded exactly like “holocaust”. In , the use of the term with a lowercase letter is acceptable, which allows us to interpret this phenomenon of world history in a broader sense. However, in the context of events related to the Jewish people and the date of January 27, domestic sources try to capitalize the term. In English-language sources, the Holocaust, like the day of remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust, is written exclusively with a capital letter. This, of course, underlines the public opinion of the West. Just one letter makes it clear to which nation such a phenomenon as the Holocaust exclusively belongs, and in connection with whose history it is recommended, first of all, to celebrate International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
There are several characteristic features of the Holocaust. All of them are connected with the tragic events of World War II. First of all, purposeful attempts to completely exterminate the Jewish and Gypsy population are singled out. Many books have been written about the tragic moments of Jewish history, documentaries and feature films have been made. Among them are “Papa” (based on the work of Alexander Galich “Sailor’s Silence”), “Heavy Sand” (based on the novel of the same name by Anatoly Rybakov), “Sobibor” by Konstantin Khabensky and others. The most famous foreign film on the theme of the Jewish Holocaust to the audience is Schindler’s List by American Steven Spielberg. Sources agree on the figure of six million exterminated members of the Jewish population. Perhaps this figure is underestimated. Secret archives are opened, previously unknown documents are introduced into scientific circulation. The war drama of the nomadic gypsy ethnic group is touched upon in the beloved by many story about Budulai, captured in the film saga based on the novel “Gypsy” by Anatoly Kalinin. In 2011, Holocaust Remembrance Day was dedicated for the first time to victims among the Roma population.
The researchers found that more than twenty million representatives of Slavic nationality (s, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Serbs, Slovenes) were subjected to the Holocaust. Among the victims are about ten million citizens of the Soviet Union. The Holocaust is characterized by the development on humans of chemical, biological and mechanical systems of mass destruction, inhumane medical experiments on the victims.
What happened on January 27th? Why is International Holocaust Remembrance Day celebrated on this day?
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is celebrated on January 27 in honor of the liberation on this day in 1945 of the prisoners of the Polish Auschwitz concentration camp. Jews and Gypsies predominated among them. There were many members of the resistance movement (mostly Poles), Soviet prisoners of war (mainly s and Ukrainians). Also imprisoned in the camp were German anti-social elements, followers of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and representatives of sexual minorities. The total number of prisoners varies in the region of 1,5-4 million people. Among the dead in Auschwitz are citizens of many European and American countries. There are even athletes – the German footballer Julius Hirsch and the 1928 Olympic champion from the Netherlands, gymnast Estella Agstergribbe. emigrants also ended their life in the camp – Grigory Rasputin’s personal secretary Aron Simanovich and public and religious figure Ilya Fondaminsky.
On the afternoon of January 27, 1945, troops of the 60th Army under the command of Marshal Ivan Konev began the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. This happened a year after the end of the war, which was no less tragic, from the point of view of human casualties – the complete lifting of the blockade of Leningrad. So, one date and exactly one year connected two major humanitarian disasters of the twentieth century. In this regard, Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 takes on a double meaning in Our Country. In besieged, freezing Leningrad during the days of the blockade, representatives of other nationalities died along with s and Jews. The 107th division of Lieutenant General Vasily Petrenko was engaged in the direct release of fascist prisoners in the Polish Auschwitz camp. It is interesting that subsequently Vasily Yakovlevich, as the liberator of the Auschwitz camp, often visited the state of Israel, even in the absence of diplomatic relations with the USSR.
The fascist ideology set as its goal the solution of the “Jewish question” through the complete destruction of this people. In the German concentration camps of the 30s and 40s, persons of Jewish nationality were forcibly and purposefully imprisoned, regardless of their nationality and citizenship. It must be emphasized once again that in all official foreign and documents, online and printed sources, the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust has exactly this form of writing. After all, as post-war documents testify, ninety percent of those killed in Auschwitz were Jews. Officially, by decision of resolution 60/7 of the UN General Assembly, the date has been celebrated all over the world since 2006. Its adoption was initiated by Our Country, Ukraine, Israel, Canada, Australia, and the USA. They were supported by representatives of more than ninety states. However, a number of states involved in the Second World War celebrated Memorial Day earlier on other days, depending on the events of their own history. In particular, Germany was one of the first in 1996 to declare January 27 the official day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust.