Dear compatriots!
Every year on January 27, the entire world community commemorates the victims of the Holocaust.
During World War II, the Nazis purposefully and systematically exterminated about six million Jews in Germany and in the occupied territories of other European countries.
The torture inflicted on prisoners of the ghettos and concentration camps, as well as the scale of the human tragedy, are shocking - according to documents from the Nuremberg Tribunal, 2.5 million people passed through the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in the Polish city of Auschwitz alone, the vast majority of whom died a martyr's death.
Thanks to the troops of the First Ukrainian Front, concentration camp prisoners who managed to escape the gas chambers and crematoria were liberated on January 27, 1945. It was in honor of this event that the United Nations General Assembly established the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
For Ukrainians, Babyn Yar, the place where over 150,000 Jews and representatives of various nationalities were executed, became a terrible symbol of the Holocaust. There was Drobytsky Yar in Kharkiv, as well as many other places where Nazi savages massively murdered Jews.
The memory of those innocently murdered on the grounds of national, ethnic, racial, cultural, and religious affiliation demonstrates the determination of the international community to never again allow the repetition of terrible crimes caused by xenophobia, racism, and totalitarian ideologies.
In unity with the free world, Ukraine will stand guard over humanism, freedom, and democracy.
As President of Ukraine, I will do everything to ensure that the highest social values are respected, and that peace and harmony based on mutual understanding always reign on our Ukrainian land.
Petro POROSHENKO
Source: http://www.president.gov.ua/content/president_biography.html
