Arye Gut: Khojaly tragedy is crime against humanity

/By AzerNews/

January 27 remembered the Holocaust that affected many people of Jewish origin during the World War II. This day is called the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It also commemorates when the Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland on January 27, 1945.

To mark this day, the Baku International Center for Multiculturalism and Baku Slavic University (BSU) have organized a round table entitled "The Holocaust and the Khojaly through the eyes of contemporaries."

The round table was attended by the State Advisor of the Azerbaijan Republic on International Affairs, Multiculturalism and Religion, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Baku International Center of Multiculturalism, Academician Kamal Abdullayev, PhD in Political Science, Senior Consultant on Public and Political Issues of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan Mehseti Aliyeva, Deputy Head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (United States) Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Deputy Ambassador of Israel to Azerbaijan Amir Rohm, Head of European Jews of Azerbaijan Gennady Zelmanovich and others.

Addressing the event, Head of the Israeli non-governmental organization "International projects for the society", an expert in international relations Arye Gut said that the Holocaust is a terrible and unbearable tragedy of the Jewish people.

The Israeli expert said that the mass murder of Jews was coded by then German bureaucracy as the "final solution of the Jewish question". “The European Jews were killed in the ghetto, concentration camps, during the "death marches" and as a result of mass executions,” Gut said.

"The Holocaust is a tragedy of my people, a tragedy that has long been a taboo subject. That is why, the bloody and barbaric act of genocide in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly is my personal pain, my personal tragedy. This tragedy is a crime against humanity," said Gut.

In 1992, the town of Khojaly, the second largest town in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, came under intense fire by the Armenian armed forces.

613 civilians mostly women and children were killed in the massacre, and a total of 1,000 people were disabled. Eight families were exterminated, 25 children lost both parents, and 130 children lost one parent. Moreover, 1,275 innocent people were taken hostage, and the fate of 150 people remains unknown. Civilians were shot at close range, scalped, and burned alive.

"Today is the day when we honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, remembering the Allied powers, whose troops defeated Nazism and those brave men who risked, and sometimes sacrificed their lives to save others. We should not ignore the cases of revival of anti-Semitism and must be ready to act against its new forms,” the Israeli expert said.

He also pointed out that Jews have lived in Azerbaijan since ancient times and they have never felt excluded. “We can say with pride that unlike many so-called civilized countries and peoples of Europe, Azerbaijanis never betrayed Jews, and Jews never betrayed Azerbaijanis," Gut emphasized.