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[AP]
THE United Nations will officially commemorate all victims of the second world war on December 1 to mark its 75th anniversary year – but a paragraph celebrating the defeat of fascism as a shared legacy was cut out.
Germany sponsored an amendment backed by the US and other Western countries to excise a section in the Russian-drafted resolution that noted victory over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was the “common legacy” of all UN member states and which condemned the desecration or destruction of “monuments erected in remembrance of those who fought in the war on the side of the United Nations.” The German amendment passed 54-40 votes, with 45 abstentions.
Since the 2014 fascist-backed coup in Ukraine, the Ukrainian government has celebrated Nazi wartime collaborator Stepan Bandera and his Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, which massacred hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles during the Holocaust, as anti-Soviet heroes. It has demolished hundreds of monuments to Red Army soldiers and renamed thousands of streets that had honoured them.
CJ ATKINS commemorates one of the most dramatic moments in working-class history
WILL DRY speaks to three former members of the armed forces about the political hypocrisy surrounding Armistice Day, how war is a function of class society, and the far right’s use of militarism and nationalism to divide working people
The decision highlights the tension between freedom of expression and the state’s role in shaping historical memory at former concentration camps, reports LEON WYSTRYCHOWSKI
As the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia rebuilds support through anti-cuts campaigns, the government seeks to silence it before October’s parliamentary elections through liberal totalitarianism, reports JOHN CALLOW