“Task number one is to tell the truth about the events during the Holocaust,” said Aleksander Kwaśniewski, President of Poland (1995-2005) and member of the Supervisory Board of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, speaking at the Kyiv Jewish Forum 2020.
In his opinion, it is necessary to commemorate the Jewish people by calling all the victims by name.
“It is absolutely unacceptable when in many places in the world, especially in my country, Poland, where we had Auschwitz-Birkenau, we cannot name all the victims,” Kwaśniewski said.
The President of Poland is sure that Babyn Yar Memorial Complex will be extremely important for the younger generation and will serve to better understand the scale and origins of the tragedy that took place in Kyiv during World War II.
At the same time, Kwaśniewski believes, when previously unknown pages of history open up, Ukrainians should be ready to come to terms: “I expect that the question will arise in Ukraine: How to understand and accept the fact that we were good during the war, we fought against the Nazis, but at the same time, we also have a black part of our history? – That some people in our country supported the Nazis, especially during the Holocaust.”
This is a very painful issue that Poland also had to deal with. “I remember a discussion in Poland about the massacre in Jedwabne. What was done by Polish neighbors against Jews, who were Polish citizens as well. It was a very painful discussion, but I think that at the end of the day, this discussion was very positive and played an important role in understanding the history of the nation,” said Kwaśniewski.
On September 8-9, the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine is holding the Kyiv Jewish Forum 2020, which, given the epidemic situation in the world, was organized online in partnership with the Jerusalem Post.
“The Jewish Confederation of Ukraine seeks to contribute to the development of the world Jewish community, and that is why we are organizing the Kyiv Jewish Forum – a global platform to discuss the opportunities and challenges faced by the Jewry around the world,” said earlier the President of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine Boris Lozhkin at the opening of KJF 2020.