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No double standards in fighting terrorism, Russia's Putin says in Auschwitz
Interfax

Cracow, 27 January: Speaking at a ceremony in the former Nazi camp Auschwitz-Birkenau today, Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged Europeans not to try to re-write history and stressed that lessons should be learnt from history to fight against a new evil - terrorism.

[Passage omitted]

Putin stressed that "today we should remember not only about the past, but also be aware of all threats of the modern world, among which terrorism which is no less dangerous and treacherous than fascism and no less merciless: thousands of innocent people have already fallen victim to it".

"In the same way as there could be no good or bad Nazis, there cannot be good or bad terrorists. Double standards are simply unacceptable here, they are deadly dangerous for civilization," the Russian president believes.

Putin stressed that the ceremony devoted to the liberation of the concentration camp in Oswiecim begins the year of the 60th anniversary of the Great Victory. According to the president, celebrations in Moscow in May will become a culmination of the year, and many of those present at the ceremony in Oswiecim will gather together in Moscow.

Putin said: "Let us do our utmost, whatever depends on us, so that we, present-day politicians and leaders of states, do not feel ashamed of our words and deeds, so that we can be honest and frank in front of everyone, in front of all those who made victory happen by paying a great price of their sufferings, tears and blood, of all those who remained here in Oswiecim forever."

[Passage omitted]

"They say time heals. Yes, this is true. But now, in this place, one of the most ghastly concentration camps, 60 years after its liberation, one feels horror, outrage and shudder at the thought of everything that took place here," Putin said.

The president of Russia noted that "it is impossible and inconceivable that humans are capable of such brutality, and it is impossible to reconcile with the thought that all this did happen in reality".

However, Putin said, railways for echelons carrying victims, gas chambers with crematoriums where every detail had been thought out, are here, right in front of our eyes. "All these visible ghastly facilities leave no room for doubts that a death factory worked here without stopping. And we will never stop asking ourselves the same question: how could this happen?" Putin said.