DOZENS of world leaders descended upon Jerusalem for the largest-ever gathering focused on commemorating the Holocaust and combating rising modern-day anti-Semitism.
Prince Charles, Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron, Mike Pence and the presidents of Germany, Italy and Austria were among the more than 40 dignitaries attending the World Holocaust Forum, which coincides with the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.
The event marks one of the largest political gatherings in Israeli history, with more than 10,000 police officers being deployed in Jerusalem and major roads leading to it.
The three-hour-long ceremony at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, called Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism, looks to project a united front in commemorating the genocide amid a global spike in anti-Jewish violence.
READ MORE: Holocaust survivors are dying out – how should we preserve their legacy?
But the unresolved remnants of Second World War politics have clouded the solemn assembly due to the differing national interpretations of the genocide from various players.
Poland’s president, who has been criticised for his own wartime revisionism, has boycotted the gathering since he was not invited to speak.
Putin was granted a central role even as he leads a campaign to play down the Soviet Union’s pre-war pact with the Nazis and shift responsibility for the war’s outbreak on Poland, which was invaded in 1939 to start the fighting.
On the eve of the gathering, Israeli president Reuven Rivlin implored visiting dignitaries to “leave history for the historians”.
“The role of political leaders, of all of us, is to shape the future,” he said.
But Putin quickly ventured into the sensitive terrain shortly after his arrival, claiming that 40% of Jewish Holocaust victims were Soviet.
Of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis, historians say about one million were Soviet.
Putin's controversial figure appears to include an additional 1.5 million Jewish victims from eastern European areas occupied by the Soviets under their pact with the Nazis.
"When it comes to the tragedy of the Holocaust, 40% of tortured and killed Jews were Soviet Union Jews. So this is our common tragedy in the fullest sense of the word," he said during a meeting with Rivlin.
Arkadi Zeltser, a Yad Vashem historian, said the accuracy of the statement depended on rival "definitions" of when the war began.
Yad Vashem, along with all other reputable institutions, considers the war to have been sparked on September 1, 1939 with the invasion of Poland.
The Soviets generally consider their "Great Patriotic War" to have started two years later, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
It was the latest chapter in a bitter dispute over Soviet actions in the Second World War.
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