Several years ago, this day was established as a new holiday, the Day of Salvation and Liberation. There have been various events in Europe and Israel to mark the day in recent years.
Russian President Vladimir Putin added a political message in his press release congratulating Jews for this year's event.
Today, in Russia and other countries, the 26th of Iyar, the Day of Salvation and Liberation, is solemnly celebrated.This date occupies a special place in the Jewish religious calendar, serving to preserve the memory of the unprecedented feat of the soldiers of the Red Army and the armies of the allied countries in the anti-Hitler coalition, who crushed Nazism and saved the Jewish and other peoples from the threat of total annihilation.Both we and future generations must sacredly keep the historical truth about the Second World War, understand what destructive consequences any connivance with nationalism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia leads to. It is with the direct followers of Nazism that our fighters and commanders are fighting today in the course of a special military operation.
His message last year did not refer to the war in Ukraine, although he said that the day helps combat all forms of antisemitism.
This is ironic because in recent years Russian antisemitism, as well as persecution of other religious minorities like Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Protestant Christians, has been steadily increasing.
According to Pinchas Goldschmidt, the exiled chief rabbi of Moscow, some 80,000 Jews have fled Russia since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, most to Israel. “This new situation for Jews in Russia is becoming more and more dangerous,” he said in March. “We are worried about the state of the Jewish community there. Not everyone can leave. We can definitely call the Jewish community of Russia today a community in distress.”
Last year, assistant secretary of the Russian Security Council Aleksey Pavlov wrote an article in a state journal that attacked Chabad-Lubavitch with a classic antisemitic trope, saying, “The main principle of the Lubavitch Hasidim is the superiority of the supporters of the sect over all nations and peoples.”
Also in 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed that Adolf Hitler had “Jewish blood.”
In 2018, Putin himself suggested that Jews might have been involved in manipulating the US elections.
As is usually the case, those who claim to be against antisemitism are merely using Jews as political footballs, and don't really give a damn about antisemitism from their own side.
