The Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FJC) is outraged by the desecration of the memorial to Soviet soldiers in Haapsalu, Estonia, where vandals uprooted 12 memorial plaques last weekend.“The events of the recent weeks put Estonia at the vanguard of Nazi revisionism of the history of World War II: here they desecrate and demolish memorials to those who fought against Nazism and they erect memorials to SS executioners,” head of the press department of the FJC Boruch Gorin said.
All this is the consequence of the political stance of local authorities, who aspire to prove that the Soviet Army was an occupation army, he said. “At the same time they forget,” Gorin added, “that the Soviet Army, by paying the price in millions of lost lives, won victory over Nazism and saved many nations from slavery and the Jewish people from complete extermination.”
“The Jewish community is outraged by such a revision of history that leads to the denial of the Holocaust, ignores the extermination by the Nazi of thousands of Jews on Estonian territory, including citizens of this country,” the FJC’s representative said, saying he believed that the memorials to victims of Nazi crimes and Soviet soldiers were desecrated by the same people.
The memorial consists of one large memorial board and 12 small boards weighing about 100 kilograms. The small boards stood on concrete foundation and were uprooted by the offenders.