The Executive Committee of the Young Communist League has released the following statement to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2020.
27 January 2020 marks the 75th Anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by soldiers of the Soviet Red Army in 1945.Nazi-fascism, the ideology which unleashed the most costly war in human history, is the same force which planned and carried out the mass extermination of millions of Jews which we know today as the Holocaust. Fascist death camps were also used in a coordination campaign of slaughter against Roma, the disabled, ethnic minorities, members of the LGBT community, communists, socialists and trade unionists.
While these crimes are almost unimaginable in their scale and evil, they were not the product of one crazed individual. Fascist parties rose to power first in Italy then in Germany Spain and Japan, as a response of the ruling class in those countries to the advance of left and democratic forces.
Lenin explained that fascism is capitalism in decay. Unable to resolve its own contradictions, when confronted with crisis and the prospect of socialist change or even any erosion of their power, the ruling class will readily utilise fascist movements and an antidemocratic counterattack.
It should be remembered that it was banks and massive multinational corporations, including British ones, that guided the Nazi Party to power in Germany. The fate of Germany’s minorities and democratic forces were of no consequence in their drive to retain power. Millions who were not tortured, gassed, beheaded or shot, were worked to death as slave labour for giant corporations like Siemens.
The heroic and decisive role of the Soviet Union in ending the Holocaust and World War II, should serve as a clear lesson to those, especially the European Union, who have the audacity to equate Nazi-fascism and Soviet Socialism. We must oppose gross historical revisionism which is an insult to the memory of millions of Soviet wear dead.
In 2020, once again faced with its own insoluble contradictions, stagnation and crisis, capitalism is once again giving rise to and supporting far right forces across Britain, Europe and the United States. The risk to the working peoples of the world, who are always the victims of fascism is clear. But working people are not passive in the face of this threat. Working people are the real authors of history. Just as the people of Britain, and across the planet rose to defeat fascism in the last century, it is us who can prevent the crimes of the Holocaust from ever being repeated.
Today we remember the countless ordinary people, victims of the Nazi death machine.
We remember the brave ordinary people who were the freedom fighters and the partisans.
In their memory, we say
No Pasaran!
Fascism will not pass!
Executive Committee
Young Communist League
27 January 2020
London, Britain
