On January 27, Ukraine joins the world in honoring the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. During World War II, six million Jews fell victim to the Nazi policy of exterminating peoples and groups deemed a threat or “inferior.” Approximately 1.5 million of these victims were from the territory of modern Ukraine, including about 40,000 from Crimea. Among the Holocaust victims were also the Krymchaks, representatives of one of Ukraine’s Indigenous peoples.

On November 1, 2005, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution No. 60/7, “Holocaust Remembrance,” which proclaimed January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Since 2012, Ukraine has commemorated the Holocaust victims at the state level alongside the international community.

As President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted, the crime of the Holocaust must never be repeated. However, tragically, the memory of the Holocaust is gradually fading, and the evil that seeks to destroy entire peoples still exists in the world today.

In 2014, genocide returned to Ukrainian soil with Russian aggression. The Russian army has engaged in mass torture and killings of Ukrainians, repeating the crimes of the Nazis during World War II, and has destroyed Ukrainian towns and villages with missiles and bombs. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has demonstrated that passive remembrance of genocidal crimes does not serve as a safeguard against their recurrence.

Even with a powerful warning like the memory of the Holocaust, not all nations and countries have drawn the necessary lessons from this horrific chapter in human history. During the ongoing war, key Holocaust memorial sites in Ukraine, such as Babyn Yar in Kyiv and Drobytskyi Yar in Kharkiv, have also been targeted and damaged by Russian shelling.