On May 14, 2024, the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) and worldwide Ukrainians join Ukraine in honoring the memory of Ukraine’s Righteous Among the Nations, who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save innocent Jewish victims doomed to death by the murderous Nazi regime.
The Holocaust, which took the lives of at least 6 million Jews, among whom nearly 1.5 million were Jews from Ukraine, remains one of the most appalling crimes committed on European soil and one of the most terrible consequences of the Second World War. Having endured the Nazi occupation, the Soviet occupation, and the current brutal Russian invasion, Ukrainians are all too familiar with hatred, oppression, and the fight for survival.
We remember and honor the innocent lives lost to the Nazis, who fostered racism and xenophobia. We pay tribute to those who risked everything, including their own lives, to save the innocent. Among the 27,000 Righteous Among the Nations, over 2,600 individuals were from Ukraine. These courageous people became symbols and pillars of hope, humanity, and salvation during one of the darkest periods in history.
To honor their brave deeds, in 2021, the parliament of Ukraine adopted a Resolution, “On Honoring the Memory of Ukrainians Who Saved Jews during the Second World War,” and set May 14 as a respective annual memorial day.
Today, dictator Putin and his entourage are distorting the history and the memory of the Second World War, using it to promote Russian militarism, chauvinism, and imperial neo-revanchism. Hypocritically hiding behind vile lies about an alleged ‘fight against Nazism,’ the Kremlin and its occupational troops are repeating the horrors of the Second World War on Ukrainian soil and using these lies to justify their massive ethnic cleansing of Ukraine.
As UWC honors the memory of Ukraine’s Righteous Among the Nations, it urges all nations to unite against the malign force of Russian chauvinism. The international community must act decisively to dismantle Putin’s regime and support Ukraine in reclaiming its full sovereignty. The world must defeat Russian imperialism just as it defeated Nazism.
Cover: Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, open sources.
