Last Friday Jewish communities across the FSU came together to commemorate the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, with memorial events taking place in almost every one of the Federation’s 100 larger communities. The region’s youth programs also actively participated in the commemorations.

One of the central events in Russia is the candle lighting ceremony in Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance center. The ceremony was attended by government officials, diplomats, survivors and war veterans, the chief rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar and Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia president Alexander Boroda.

“Holocaust is the worst tragedy in out people’s history, which touched almost every family in the former Soviet Union. Every year on January 27 Jewish communities across the FSU gather at ceremonies in memory of the lost lives of our loved ones. Keeping this memory alive is our moral obligation and we try to delicately guard it and pass it on to young generations,” said Alexander Boroda ahead of Friday’s ceremony.

Memorial ceremonies were conducted in Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, Volgograd, Rostov, Baku, Kharkov, Tallinn and everywhere else in the region.

The International Holocaust Remembrance day was established in 2005 by a United Nations resolution and since then it is widely commemorated in the FSU with official ceremonies, movie and theater performances on the topic. Many educational youth events are held in the week prior to the memorial day as well.