Every year on 27 January the world commemorates the victims of the Holocaust and reaffirms its unwavering commitment to combating anti-Semitism, racism, and other forms of hatred. This date was officially established in 2005 by Resolution 60/7 of the United Nations General Assembly which was initiated by 104 member states of the organization, including the Republic of Belarus. It was precisely on 27 January 1945 that Soviet troops liberated the prisoners of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. The exact number of victims is unknown, though various sources estimate it to be between 1.5 and 4 million people. In a conversation with BelTA, Igor Marzalyuk, a member of the House of Representatives, discussed how history has proven the fallacy of racial superiority theories and expressed concern that certain forces are attempting to justify the Nazis and their collaborators today.
Racist foundation of Nazi ideology
Racist foundation of Nazi ideology
“Hitlerism arose from the basis of so-called racial nationalism. Why did this happen? In the 19th century, there was a rapid expansion of Western European powers into Africa, a significant part of Asia, and other regions, while in the United States of America, the indigenous population was being exterminated. All of this demanded ideological justification.We know Charles Darwin’s theory on the origin of species. This theory, which explains by scientific methods the origin of species and the struggle between them, contains an important postulate - the theory of natural selection. And so, the racists transferred the principles of Darwin's theory, in an entirely unscientific manner, from the biological world to the human world. They claimed that just as there are higher and lower species, more and less developed individuals among animals, so too is humanity divided into ‘races of slaves’ and ‘races of masters’,” Igor Marzalyuk noted.
This concept would later form the foundation of the doctrine of the Third Reich and the entirety of Nazi ideology. “For the Nazis, there was no equality of peoples, only a hierarchy of races. And by races, they did not mean those generally accepted in science. They believed the true Aryans – the Northern Europeans –were the superior race. There was a philosopher, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who argued that it was the Germanic peoples who founded most states. Thus, there were two most advanced races: the Germanic (which included the English, Scandinavians, and Dutch) and the Mediterranean, represented by the French, Italians, and Spaniards. Those were the two dominant races, which were to be on top of all others,” the historian explained.
From the Nazi perspective, all Slavs without exception were considered a slave race. “We were viewed within this concept as subhumans, because they argued that all our cultural and technological advancements were imported from outside, primarily by the Germanic peoples. Consequently, we were destined to be subjugated and turned into a slave race, while the dominant position would be reserved exclusively for representatives of the superior race. Furthermore, there were so-called ‘racial parasites’ or, for the Nazis, non-races altogether. Jews and Roma were not races, but racial diseases for the Nazis. According to the Nazis’ plan, Jews were to be completely exterminated, without a trace. Not a single Jew had any chance of survival. Nazi ideology argued that the negative qualities inherent in Jews were incurable, and therefore, Jews could not be integrated or adapted into white European society,” concluded Igor Marzalyuk.
What future did the Nazis envision for the Slavs?
The Nazis also practiced extermination against the Slavs. “But the actions against the Slavs differed in that a significant portion were planned for destruction, while those they considered ‘racially fit’, the Nazis intended to Germanize. Others were meant to be turned into slaves. They would have destroyed us as a nation; they saw us as slaves obligated to obey the ‘white masters’. Those who resisted would meet the same fate as the Jews. Some, especially children of ‘pure blood’, they would have turned into Germans, while the rest would have been used for forced labor. Our future development did not concern them at all. Essentially, we were to become ethnographic ‘compost’,” the MP said.
These plans entailed the mass extermination of millions of Slavs, including Belarusians. There is documentary evidence confirming the existence of such designs.
“The concepts of racial supremacy were consumed in the fire of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes.”
“Racist concepts, when not directly tied to Jews, were extremely popular across Europe. Racism was the norm in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was not an anomaly. It’s shocking to imagine today, but it’s a fact: captured indigenous people were placed in cages and put on display in zoos. Take Australia, for example. Old reference books on the region’s flora and fauna would list ‘Aboriginals’ in the fauna section, right alongside kangaroos after a comma. In other words, well into the late 1800s and early 1900s, British colonizers did not regard Aboriginal people as human beings,” Igor Marzalyuk stressed.
He further pointed out that all concepts of racial supremacy were consumed in the fire of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes. “After the Nuremberg trials, after World War II, when the monstrous crimes of the Nazis in the occupied territories became known - the mass murders of Jews and Slavs - these theories were condemned as anti-human. Today, advocating for them is something only a madman or a complete pariah would do. Since then, fascism and Nazism transformed into offensive terms and swear words – a far cry from what they represented in the 1920s and 30s, prior to the Nazis’ heinous crimes and the outbreak of World War II,” the MP noted.
Crypto-Nazism rears its ugly head
Despite the obvious inhumanity of Nazism and its overtly misanthropic nature, the modern world is facing a phenomenon which Igor Marzalyuk calls “crypto-Nazism.” “In contemporary discourse, it is more appropriate to speak not of a direct reproduction of Nazi ideology, but of its transformed, hidden form – so-called crypto-Nazism. This phenomenon is especially noticeable in Eastern and Central European countries, where, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, new national identities and corresponding historical narratives were actively being formed. This historical policy often involves selectively crafting the image of ‘national heroes,’ portrayed as a third force that supposedly resisted both Stalinism and Nazism. Such a retrospective narrative is positioned as anticipating the independent path subsequently chosen by the post-Soviet independent states,” Igor Marzalyuk emphasized.
It is precisely under the guise of such an alternative point of view that the whitewashing of the Nazi regime and its accomplices takes place. “Anti-Soviet elements are proclaimed as national heroes, their actions declared as almost a model to follow. The same applies to everything connected with their iconography, symbols, and stated aims. Why is this done? To rehabilitate those who took an extremely active part, both in word and deed, in Nazi atrocities,” the MP stated.
The Holocaust and other crimes of Nazism left horrific scars in the memory of many families. Stories of the horrors of Nazi concentration camps and ghettos are passed down from generation to generation. For example, Zeidel Kushner, his wife Chinda, their son Honya, and daughters Esther, Rae, and Lea were prisoners of the Novogrudok Ghetto. Along with fellow prisoners, they took part in the largest mass escape in the history of the war on 26 September 1943. More than 230 people fled through a tunnel dug by ghetto prisoners, though only half ultimately survived. Until the end of the war, the Kushners, together with other survivors of the ghetto, remained in Tuvia Bielski’s partisan brigade, which not only fought the occupiers but also provided protection for Jews, saving them from extermination by the fascists. In the “Forest Jerusalem” (as the brigade was called), Rae met a young carpenter named Yosif Berkovich, who later became her husband and took his wife’s surname. After the liberation of Novogrudok, the Kushners returned to the ruins, and then they left for the USA, where they achieved great success in developing their business. The family’s most famous member, Jared Kushner, became the son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump by marrying his daughter Ivanka. Today, he plays a significant role in politics and runs his own large business.
The Kushner family remembers and honors its history. Its members have visited Novogrudok many times. Rae’s son, Charles Kushner, has been to Novogrudok repeatedly, bringing his children and grandchildren. It was Charles who supported the idea of building a Wall of Remembrance in Novogrudok, inscribed with the names of all the people who escaped through the tunnel. “Be careful and watch closely who comes to power. Your government must not be held by madmen like Hitler, by racists. I tell this to my children. Let us hope this never happens again, but it still could,” warned Rae Kushner in a TV interview in the 1980s.
Photos of navagrudak.museum.by BelTA.
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