BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS
DATE:
20/10/2008
Belarus President Takes Part In Unprecedented Holocaust Memorial
MINSK, Belarus (AFP)--Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko on Monday took part in unprecedented commemorations for the hundreds of thousands of Jews killed in Belarus under Nazi occupation in World War II.
"Ideas of xenophobia and ethnic injustice should never be celebrated... The principles of humanism and and goodwill carry great importance for Belarussians, " Lukashenko told a gathering in the center of the Belarussian capital by a pit where more than 5,000 Jews were shot by Nazi forces.
The comments by Lukashenko, who has been ostracized by the U.S. as Europe's " last dictator," represent a dramatic about-face on the subject of the Holocaust.
Up until now, he had stuck to a Soviet policy of not differentiating the fate of Jews in World War II from general Soviet losses, leaving a veil over Nazi Germany's special targeting of Jews.
More than 800,000 Jewish civilians are believed to have been killed within the present-day borders of Belarus, which was then part of the Soviet Union, including tens of thousands transported here from western Europe for extermination.
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