Russian officials were not invited to the ceremony marking the 78th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau as a result of Russian aggression against Ukraine, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum said on Wednesday, AFP reports.

“In the context of the aggression against free and independent Ukraine, the representatives of the Russian Federation were not invited to take part in this year’s commemoration of the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz”, which is to be held on Friday, Pyotr Savitskyi said. A spokesman for the museum told AFP about it.

Until now, Russia has always participated in the ceremonies, which are held annually on January 27, and its representative gave a speech during the main ceremony.

According to the director of the museum, historian Piotr Cyvinsky, it was obvious that he could not “sign a single letter addressed to the Russian ambassador in the tone of an invitation” in the context of the conflict.

“I hope that this will change in the future, but we still have a long way to go. (…) Russia will need an extremely long time and a very deep introspection after this conflict to return to the salons of the civilized world,” he said, the agency quotes PAP.

On February 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine, the museum called the Russian attack an “act of barbarism.”

“This act of barbarism will be judged by history, and its authors – we should hope – by the UN International Court of Justice,” the museum said on Twitter.

Built in occupied Poland, Auschwitz-Birkenau is a symbol of the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany against six million European Jews, one million of whom perished in the camp between 1940 and 1945, along with over 100,000 non-Jews.

On January 27, 1945, the Red Army liberated the camp, where about 80,000 non-Jewish Poles, 25,000 Roma and 20,000 Soviet soldiers died.

(source: Agerpres)