The International Federation of Resistance Fighters (FIR) and its member federations understand it as a living obligation on May 8/9 to remember the final military defeat of German fascism.
We repeat it again and again:
These dates mark the victory over the inhuman regime of Hitler’s fascism,
– which persecuted, imprisoned and killed political opponents and dissidents,
– which murdered millions of people solely on the basis of a constructed racial affiliation as Jews, as Sinti and Roma, as Slavs,
– which overran Europe and even countries and peoples in other parts of the world with war, occupation and extermination, with the goal of imperial hegemony and the destruction of other states,
– which in the cruel result cost the lives of more than 60 million people.
On this day, we remember and commemorate the millions of victims of fascist rule in the concentration and extermination camps and as consequences of fascist expansionism among the soldiers and civilians.
We thank all forces of the anti-Hitler coalition, the soldiers of the armed forces of the Allies, more specifically the Soviet Army, which bore the brunt of this war.
We thank the partisans and the resistance fighters in all countries occupied by fascism, giving their lives for the freedom of their homeland. Among them were also German anti-fascists who fought underground in fascist Germany or from exile in the ranks of the partisans and the Allied forces for the liberation of their own country.
We thank all the women and men who – at the risk of their freedom, health and lives – made this victory possible.
When today in various countries of Europe this historical truth is denied,
when monuments and other places of remembrance for the liberators from fascist barbarism are desecrated and disregarded,
when collaborators of the fascist occupiers are honored as “freedom fighters”, and
when the fascist regime is equated with other political systems, mixing perpetrators and the victims,
then this is historical revisionism, which we oppose with all our strength.
The liberation and military victory are a lasting commitment for our future action together with today’s generations
– against neo-fascism, extreme right and right-wing populism, whose political influence has significantly increased in various countries,
– against xenophobia, racism, religious intolerance and anti-Semitism, whose violent forms we have had to witness several times in the last time,
– against war, imperial hegemony, state and non-state terrorism and their social roots, because these dangers for peace in international relations are far from being eliminated. We reaffirm our support for the United Nations as the main organization for enforcing international law.
For us, the legacy of the survivors formulated in the “Oath of Buchenwald” and other declarations after liberation: “Destruction of Nazism with its roots, creation of a new world of peace and freedom”, is not a document for history, but a lasting political commitment for today and tomorrow. In this sense, the FIR and its member organizations call on all anti-fascists to work for the realization of wide-ranging political and social human rights, for peace, freedom and democracy.
