It's time for Germany to overcome its guilt complex towards Russia and contribute to stopping the war in Ukraine

Yuri Maznychenko 26 March 2022

"Looks like we're here," - I say to my beloved, and try to get a good look at the neighbourhood from the bus window while a line forms in the cabin toward the exit. I imagined the scary surroundings, and how else could it be, when during World War II it was a godforsaken place that became the last resting place for millions of people. The German National Socialists decided that the Jews desecrated humanity and did not deserve the right to live. And it was here that they resorted to the mass extermination of members of this race.

The concentration camp at Auschwitz, which later expanded to Auschwitz-Birkenau, as the number of prisoners and the rate of their extermination had grown. It took us an hour and a half to get from Krakow to one of the most terrible war museums in the history of civilization.

We get off the bus and find ourselves near a hot dog and drink stand. It is a long line in front of it and we realize that there is no chance for coffee break after the trip. As we walk past the benches in the small square in front of the entrance, we notice how cosmopolitan this place is - tourists from all over the world come to learn about the tragic pages of Europe in the 1940s.

The museum's official website warns of a clear visiting schedule, and to enter the territory is only possible as part of a tour group. In fact, everything is simpler. Several guides are found near the stele with the embossed text warning future generations that such a tragedy could never happen again. It took a few minutes to find a group of people who wanted to come in. After buying passes and seeing the Nazi slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" with our own eyes, we separate ourselves from the main group and go to get acquainted with history.

I don't even know what is more depressing: the photos of thousands of prisoners and the piles of personal belongings of adults and children in the Auschwitz buildings, which the Nazis took away from passengers upon arrival at their destination, or the rows of dark and cold barracks in Birkenau, from which the Sonderkommando took those who could no longer work and benefit the Nazis due to illness and exhaustion into the gas chambers.

Most of the concentration camp crematoriums were destroyed by the Nazis themselves in 1944 on the eve of the Soviet attack. Still, a few of them withstood. Now there is a dead silence, but we are frozen with horror as we realize that their walls continue to keep evidence of crimes against humanity. When the chimney began to puff black smoke, the whole camp already knew that several hundred more relatives, friends, or simply shelf-neighbors had not managed to wait for the end of this hell on earth.

Near the crematorium - a number of memorial plaques with text in different languages. "Let this place where the Nazis killed almost one and a half million men, women and children, mostly Jews from different European countries, be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity forever," - the English-language version says. I don't know why, but it is in this place that the sadness that rolled from the multitude of what I saw bursts out and turns into a stream of tears that cannot be stopped. It's been three years since that trip, but even now, as I look at the memorable photos and write this text, I can't contain my emotions.

Although more than 80 years have passed since those events, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was never destroyed after the war. Poland preserves this historical monument in its original form. Too much pain and suffering was caused by the fanatical zeal of the Nazis to organize a new world order. Not only Poles, but also many other European nations, including Ukrainians, paid too high a price in that war.

After the surrender, Germany was divided into two states, and after years of sketching sins and washing the blood of harmless victims off their hands, the Germans tore down the Berlin Wall to become a fully democratic society with zero tolerance for any manifestation of Nazism.

In the twenty-first century, Europe is again threatened by full-scale war. But this time the cause for concern comes from the east: Russia is in agony after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the loss of its status as a world state, and its inability to confront the United States in matters of geopolitics. And its president, Vladimir Putin, is living with an obsession to unite Russia, Ukraine and Belarus in order to recreate the former empire and strengthen its position on the Eastern European border with NATO.

Except that Putin forgot to ask Ukraine if it liked such an idea and, like Adolf Hitler did to Poland in 1939, without declaring war, launched a full-scale invasion of Ukrainian lands in order to overthrow the pro-Western and democratic government and fully occupy the state. He explained the move to his people as "demilitarization and liberation of Russian-speaking Ukrainians from the Nazis". Putin's decision to start a war with Ukraine is supported by 3/4 of the Russian population. Blinded by propaganda, Russians never realized that they, the only heirs to the victory over Nazism, contributed to its return.

Ukraine, which was under Russian influence for many years, went through two revolutions in 2004 and 2013-2014 to finally realize the geopolitical need to follow the western direction. More than one generation of Ukrainians have had to witness the redistribution of Ukrainian territory and live as part of foreign states. Ukraine fought for its statehood and independence after World War I, but without support and European recognition, most of its territory was seized by the Soviet Bolsheviks.

The Soviet authorities managed to subdue the freedom-loving Ukrainian people only through an artificially created famine in 1932-1934 that took the lives of nearly 4.5 million people (4 million people of all ages and 500 thousand unborn due to deaths). The Soviet regime destroyed any mention of Ukrainian identity by all means - forbidding the use of the Ukrainian language, erasing the heroes of the Ukrainian nation from history, and imposing the idea of a "brotherly nation," in which Ukrainians always had to be content with the role of a "younger brother".

Having survived genocide, Ukraine endured the independence it proclaimed in 1991, accepted its multinationality associated with the international conflicts of past centuries, and finally matured with its own civilizational choice. Not imposed once again by the conqueror country, but supported by the majority of the Ukrainian people.

On February 28, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed Ukraine's application for membership in the European Union. This is not a populist decision by a politician seeking support from the West amid a war with Russia, but a reflection of the real sentiments of 41 million Ukrainians who want to be accepted into the big European family. Right now Ukrainians are defending not only their lands against the occupants, but also European democratic values against the Russian plague of permissiveness and irresponsibility for their crimes.

A number of European countries supported Ukraine's desire to join the European Union. Among them is Poland, which keeps a museum in Auschwitz to commemorate the victims of Nazism. Over the last month, the Poles have already received 2.3 million refugees from Ukraine, there are centres across the country with humanitarian aid going to the Polish-Ukrainian border, and even the national football team of Poland refused to play a 2022 World Cup qualifying match with Russia, citing the unacceptability of Russian military invasion of Ukraine.

Meantime, Germany turned out to be one of the opponents of the accelerated entry of Ukraine into the European Union. Despite the fact that 69% of Germans, according to social surveys, support Ukraine's membership in the EU. And in general, insane flows of humanitarian aid have been sent from Germany to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia's military aggression.

Germans show sympathy and solidarity with the Ukrainian people, but the German state, even after many years, cannot completely get rid of the guilt complex for the unleashed world war and the deaths of tens of millions of soldiers and civilians. Germans have long raised their country from the ruins of war, by socio-economic standards, built one of the most successful states in the world, but at the same time are still not risking entering into direct confrontation with the Russians. Even when hateful Nazism has been revived in Russia itself and now threatens peace and stability in Europe.

Germany, which provoked two world wars, can become a key peacemaker and prevent the outbreak of a third major planetary conflict. To do this, the country needs to support the EU embargo on oil and gas trade with Russia.

Germans consider the potential losses in the economy from stopping the purchase of cheap Russian energy carriers and are not happy about the prospect of a drop of up to 3% of GDP tied up in German-Russian energy relations. Right now, according to the authorities, Germany is not ready to completely stop importing Russian oil and gas.

The EU's procrastination in imposing an energy embargo brings Russia hundreds of millions of euros every day, which Putin's regime uses to wage war in Ukraine. Obviously, Germany and other EU members who do not want a quick solution to this issue are not only contributing to a potential military conflict in Europe but also provoking a continental economic recession and a humanitarian crisis. After all, more than 3 million Ukrainian refugees have already left for the West, assisted by European taxpayers' money. And the number of Ukrainians fleeing the war will only increase as Russian military aggression continues and the West lacks the military resources to contain it.

Western sanctions have already caused great damage to the Russian economy. But the war in Ukraine and Russia's offensive against the West will only end when the EU stops paying "Putin's gas station," which is now depriving tens of thousands of lives and destroying the well-being of millions of Ukrainian citizens.