Correspondent in Moscow
The news, Ivan Martynouchkine, learned it “
without surprise but rather with sadness
”.
On Friday, Holocaust Day and the seventy-eighth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Red Army, Russia was not invited to the commemorations because of the war in Ukraine.
A decision condemned by Vladimir Putin who denounced on Friday "
attempts to review our country's contribution to the Great Victory
" and "
crimes against civilians
which he says Ukrainians are currently engaging in.
Veteran Martynouchkin, 99 (he was born in 1923), has his own reasons.
On January 27, 1945, at the end of the day, this lieutenant who commands a company of machine gunners, was one of the very first to enter the death camp – today he is one of the last living witnesses of this defining event of the end of the Second World War, and of the history of the 20th century.
“
Dressed in striped outfits, some…
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