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UNESCO summit decision ‘mockery’: Auschwitz museum

The decision of UNESCO to not cancel a June 2022 session in Russia is a “mockery of innocent Ukrainian victims,” the Auschwitz memorial museum said in a statement.

“Given the unjustifiable Russian military aggression in independent and sovereign Ukraine, planning a discussion on World Heritage in Russia sounds like a mockery of innocent Ukrainian victims,” the statement said.

The museum quoted the first paragraph of the 1972 UNESCO Convention that states that: “the cultural heritage and the natural heritage are increasingly threatened with destruction not only by the traditional causes of decay but also by changing social and economic conditions which aggravate the situation with even more formidable phenomena of damage or destruction.” This, the museum said in a recent social media post, “can be understood to include Russian artillery shelling, bombing, and other forms of wartime destruction”.

“Judging by the available program of the session, issues related to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp (1940-1945), will not be dealt with during the meeting. Such a situation would be completely unbearable and would require an international debate on the sense of continuing to include Auschwitz-Birkenau on the UNESCO World Heritage List,” the statement added.

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 in what the West has called a “violent and unprovoked attack”. Thousands have already died in the conflict, and around 1.3 million Ukrinians have been forced to leave the country.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau museum was set up to commemorate over a million people who were murdered on the site during the Nazi-German occupation of Poland. The museum was visited by millions of people yearly.

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