Day of liberation – 8/9 May 2020 – Day of victory

28. April 2020

75 years ago, on 8 and 9 May 1945, mankind experienced the final military crushing of German fascism. These dates mark the victory over the inhuman regime of Hitler fascism,

– which excluded, persecuted and imprisoned political opponents and dissenters,

– which murdered millions of people from a self-constructed race alone as Jews, as Sinti and Roma, as Slavs,

– which covered the states in Europe and even countries and peoples in other parts of the world with war, occupation and annihilation, with the aim of imperial hegemony and the destruction of the Soviet Union,

– which, in its cruel outcome, cost the lives of at least 55 million people.

Today in some countries of Europe the historical truth is denied, the liberators from the fascist barbarism are disregarded, the collaborators with the fascist occupant are honoured as “freedom fighters”.

Against these forms of historical revisionism, we emphasize as FIR:

The fascist plans of world domination were stopped by the common activities of the anti-Hitler coalition. It was the members of the armed forces of the allies, above all the members of the Soviet army, who carried the main load of the war, which destroyed this threat also militarily.

It was the partisans and resistance fighters in all countries occupied by fascism, with the communists in the front rows, who gave their lives for the freedom of their homeland.

Part of this anti – Hitler – coalition were also German anti-fascists, who fought illegally in Germany, in the ranks of the partisans or together with the allied forces for the liberation of their own country.

We remember all those women and men who – often at the risk of their lives – made the liberation possible.

The scandalous declaration of the European Parliament on 19 September 2019 is a bad example, an ideological relapse into the worst period of the Cold War. Contrary to all scientific evidence, it is claimed that it was only with the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty that “the course was set for the Second World War”.

In this text the oppressors and the oppressed, the victims and the criminals, the occupiers and the liberators from fascist barbarism were equated untruthfully. It is also claimed that with the end of the war only one “totalitarian rule” was replaced by the other.

The FIR stresses in contrast to this:

May 8/9, 1945 was the day of liberation and victory

– for all peoples threatened by German fascism,

– for the prisoners of the fascist concentration camps, who had been sent on death march while still in the agony of the Nazi regime,

– for the forced labourers who had to perform slave labour in various forms for German industry, agriculture and war policy,

– for the Nazi opponents in Germany itself.

It marks the beginning of a new policy in international relations. The community of action of all Nazi opponents created the basis for the founding of the United Nations and the establishment of the foundations of international law for the prosecution and conviction of the main war criminals in the Nuremberg Tribunal. These legal norms are still valid today, as the General Assembly of the United Nations has repeatedly confirmed.

At that time the common slogan of all anti-fascists was “Never again war! Never again fascism!” For the FIR and its member federations, this is an obligation for today and tomorrow.

We act together with the today’s generations

– against neo-fascism, extreme right and right-wing populism,

– against xenophobia, racism, religious intolerance and anti-Semitism,

– against war, imperial hegemony, state and non-state terrorism and their social roots.

Liberation forms the basis for the vision of a “new world of peace and freedom”, as the prisoners of Buchenwald concentration camp called for on 19 April 1945.

In their sense, the member organizations of FIR fight today for the realization of comprehensive political and social human rights, for peace and democracy. Together we celebrate 8/9 May 2020 as day of liberation and day of victory.