Yesterday, Jews around the world recalled the events in Zmievskaya Balka. In this area, in Rostov-on-Don there is one of the largest graves of victims of the Holocaust. In August 1942, the Nazis killed here about 27,000 residents of Rostov-on-Don; most of them were the Jews.
Now the Russian Jewish Congress is concerned about the organization of Memorial Day. Recognizing that there is no state antisemitism in Russia today, the president of Congress, Yuri Kanner said that "Russia should pay more attention to this event, because Russia is a historic homeland of nearly half the Jews who live in the world today." He recalled that August 12 is the anniversary of two events: there are the 70th anniversary of the events in Zmievskaya Balka and the 60th anniversary of the execution of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in Moscow. "The shooting of the Jewish Antifascist Committee and the state antisemitism in the Soviet Union are still not firmly condemned. The rehabilitation of victims who survived the anti-Semitic campaign of the late 1940s - early 1950s was held with numerous reservations" - Kanner says. According to him, today there is no antisemitism on the part of the state, but there is bureaucratic antisemitism. In Rostov-on-Don, Congress supports the "claims of local Jews about the return of the epigraph that the grave in Zmievskaya Balka includes the grave of the victims of the Holocaust."
Speaking about the shooting of the Jewish Antifascist Committee, Ilya Altman, co-chairman of the `scientific-educational center "Holocaust", historian, said that "among the executed people there were not only well-known writers, scientists, artists, but almost half the people were journalists. The main accused person was Solomon Lozovsky, whose name is associated with the famous words, "Soviet Information Bureau reports"; he was the head of the Soviet Information Bureau from May 9, 1945." Altman said that after the events in Zmievskaya Balka the newspaper wrote "peaceful Soviet citizens" instead of the word "Jews”. "It makes us think about the memory of the war in general. Today, in Rostov-on-Don, people began to say: "The Jews want to separate their victims from the others". But it was the Nazi policy which made the Jews a separate category of victims. Today, any neo-Nazi ideology is associated with this ...
The memory of the Holocaust is not only the memory of the victims, and not just the memory of the executioners. It is also the memory of the Red Army that saved the Jews from extermination...
Preparing for the event in Rostov-on-Don, we brought there a legendary man who now heads the council of Yad Vashem, the leading Holocaust museum of the world. He is the former Chief Rabbi of Israel, and now the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, who was ten years old when he was in Buchenwald; he was saved by an unknown man and knew only one thing about him: he knew that his name was Fedor, and he was from Rostov. He looked for him during all his life, and only five years ago we managed to find out his full name - Fedor Mihovichenko. The former Chief Rabbi of Israel will start his visit to Rostov with visiting the grave of the man who saved him and will meet with his daughters.
We also will hold a conference on the problems of the history of the Holocaust in the North Caucasus. It is also personalized; one of the victims who died there is a famous psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein. In Hollywood, there was a film about her last year entitled "A Dangerous Method." The participants of the conference will consider the fate of Jewish intellectuals and the problem of the memory of the events in Zmiyevskaya Balka. We will bring together scientists from 11 countries, from well-known institutes which are co-organizers of the conference; in particular, Dr. Shimon Samuels, the director of the European Center of the famous center of Simon Wiesenthal, will present a concept paper on the problems of preserving the memory. It is very important that in this difficult situation in Rostov-on-Don with the organizers of this conference the two largest research centers of the city offered us their assistance; the first one is the Southern Scientific Center of the Academy of Sciences, where we will open our conference, and the second one is the Southern Federal University which does its best so that students know more about the Holocaust.
At the Film Forum we will present several films of Yelena Yakovich, famous film director; the channel "Culture" is currently demonstrating her film about Brodsky. Grigori Ilugdin will present his film about Wallenberg. By the way, it is very symbolic: on August 3 we have held a memorial meeting on Wallenberg. There is an amazing memory chain now in August; we celebrate one hundred years since the birth of Wallenberg who died here in Moscow, in Lubyanka. In Moscow there are no streets or squares named after Wallenberg, unlike other countries. Here is the chain of the lack of memory about the people who saved Jews (Wallenberg is a famous Righteous among the Nations), the victims of Stalinism, the victims of Nazism; our event aims at raising again the question about it, it must be remembered and not just discussed; it should be studied at schools and universities. This memory should be perpetuated in our country".
