Across Eastern and Central Europe, the memory of the Holocaust is under assault by right wing activists and Governments seeking to downplay their own country’s role in the Holocaust.
One way they do this is by manipulating history to inflate and equate their own suffering under the Soviets with the genocide of European Jewry by the Nazis, in a practice known as ‘double genocide’. The Seventy Years Declaration is at the forefront of the campaign to stop this rewriting of history that has gained traction in the European Parliament and even the American Congress.
While acknowledging the suffering of European civilians under Stalin, the Seventy Years Declaration advocates that Communism and Nazism were distinct experiences, with significant differences, and holds that they should be taught and commemorated in their own right, respectively. The awful crimes of Stalinist Communism must be recognised, but not at the expense of the truth about the Holocaust. Double genocide is rewriting history. If history is rewritten, lessons are not learnt and its tragic events can be repeated.