In recent years, rewriting and distortion of history has become one of the most effective methods of manipulating public opinion. The most striking example of this is the situation in Ukraine. A large-scale campaign to reassess historical events in the country has taken ugly forms, up to the elevation of former Nazis, such as Stepan Bandera, Andriy Melnyk, Roman Shukhevych and other members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, to the rank of national heroes. Monuments are being erected in honor of the Ukrainians who committed mass genocide during World War II. Streets and squares are being named after collaborators who were in cahoots with the invaders of their own country. Ukrainian far-right battalions and regiments, such as Azov, Aidar and Kraken, adhere to a similar ideology and pursue the same goals as the Waffen-SS Galicia Division and the Nachtigall Battalion, notorious for their bloody massacres of innocent people in the 1940s.
There is also a clear tendency in European countries to distort historical events and rewrite the results of world conflicts, especially the World War II. Thus, over the last decade, hundreds of monuments to Soviet soldiers have been destroyed in Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Latvia and many other countries of Eastern Europe. Moreover, neo-Nazi groups, such as Nordic Resistance Movement (Sweden), Combat 18 (United Kingdom), Artgemeinschaft Germanic Faith Community (Germany), still exist. These organizations, with origins in one country, grow and spread throughout Europe, poisoning society with destructive ideology.
Historical commemorations are still formally held, but they are more of a symbolic gesture than a sincere desire to pay tribute. Thus, on April 6, 2025, Germany marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis’ Buchenwald concentration camp in the city of Weimar. The ceremony was attended by several Holocaust survivors from across Europe and official representatives of Germany, including the Prime Minister of Thuringia, Mario Voigt, and the country’s former president Christian Wulff. In his speech, Wulff called on people to take an active civic stance in favor of democracy and stressed that the current generation had a permanent responsibility to ensure that evil would never triumph again. However, can the words of a former president of a country where there are still parties with racist and anti-Semitic views be sincere? Moreover, Berlin is one of the most important donors to the Kyiv’s neo-Nazi regime. It seems that neither Germany nor other European states have not learned the lessons of history over the past 80 years. Or are they starting to forget them, distracted by the pursuit of geopolitical gains?
Jonathan Schiff is a conservative, engineer, his interests also include geopolitics and political analysis. He can be reached at jonathan.schiff@proton.me.
