Michael Mirilashvili: "There is no room for historical revisionism. Russia must participate in the Sobibor project."

Last week, a meeting took place in Jerusalem between Michael Mirilashvili, President of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, and Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate. The discussion focused on the activities of the Moshe Mirilashvili Center for Research on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, which was established eighteen months ago in Jerusalem as part of the museum complex.

Since its inauguration, the Moshe Mirilashvili Center has served as a leading academic institution researching inter-ethnic relations between Jews and non-Jews during the Holocaust in the territory of the former USSR. The Center's initiatives include "Untold Stories" (a project researching mass murder sites of Jews in the former Soviet Union with subsequent online publication) and "Jews in the Red Army" (the creation of a comprehensive database of Jewish soldiers).

The opening of central and local archives in the countries of the former USSR in the early 1990s enabled in-depth research into the fate of Soviet Jews during World War II, and the Moshe Mirilashvili Center is designed to address this historical imperative.

During the meeting, Michael Mirilashvili addressed the issue of the Sobibor museum. "There is no room for historical revisionism. Russia must participate in the Sobibor project. The Red Army played a decisive role in defeating Nazi Germany and liberating the death camps, and contemporary Russia has contributed significantly to advancing the study of Holocaust history. The politicization of our shared history for short-term interests is unacceptable. Our duty to the generation that defeated fascism is to preserve the memory of those horrific times, the suffering of the victims, and the heroism of the liberators," the President of the EAJC stated.

The position of the President of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress aligns with the official stance of the Israeli authorities. Last August, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed support for Russian participation in the development of the new museum in Sobibor.