Putin tries to exterminate us as a nation, as Hitler tried to exterminate the Jewish people during World War II

The German Bundestag commemorated the victims of National Socialism at a Ceremony of Remembrance on January 29, 2025. This year’s Ceremony of Remembrance marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on January 27, 1945. This speech was given by a Holocaust survivor, 88-year-old Roman Shvartsman. 

Roman Shvartsman was born in Bershad, to the north of Odesa, in Ukraine in 1936. As a child, he was deported to the Bershad ghetto in the summer of 1941, because of his Jewish faith. Today, Shvartsman is chairman of the Ukrainian Association of Jews – Former Prisoners of Ghetto and Nazi Concentration Camps, among other positions.

ZMINA publishes his speech at the Bundestag.

Roman Shvartsman is giving a speech at the Bundestag

President of the Bundestag, Federal President, Federal Chancellor, Members of Parliament, distinguished guests!

At the outset, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for this opportunity to address you here today. I stand before you as a person who experienced one of the cruelest sides of human history.

My personal story is a story of survival, struggle, and hope. My story is the story of millions of people who can no longer tell their own stories.

I was born on September 10th, 1936, in the Ukrainian village of Beshad. I was one of nine children. We lived in great poverty and in a narrow space, a big family in two rooms of a tiny home with floors and walls made of clay. There were only two beds, each with four people, but we were alive.

At home, we only spoke Yiddish. I still speak this language very well. At school, we only spoke Ukrainian.

Judaism was present in our village. Around half of its inhabitants were Jews. We knew about it, but we didn’t talk much about it.

After the war, when we got older, the Soviet authorities let us know that many things were not allowed for us Jews. For example, we were not allowed to go to university. Jews have always tried to remain faithful to their religion. Even when they assimilated, they preserved their Jewish values and the dignity of the Jewish nation.

In 1936, my father became a communist. My brother Lazar and I were not circumcised, in contrast to my four brothers who were born before 1936.

There was no rabbi in our village. Religion was banned. The Soviet authorities did not only oppress the Jewish but also the Orthodox religion.

They destroyed synagogues and churches. My mother cultivated the Jewish tradition in her way. She didn’t brag about it. She did it for herself. In our village, there were many older Jews who had fought during the Great War. They said, “We don’t have to flee. The Germans are decent and cultured people.” They couldn’t possibly imagine what was waiting for us.

When my father and my older brother were drafted into the Red Army on June 23, 1941, my father asked my mother to take the rest of us to a safe place as Hitler’s hostilities against the Jews were already known.

Our escape did not last long, and we suffered through two horrific weeks. We travelled nowhere in a horse-drawn cart while being bombed.

I remember fleeing through cornfields from soldiers with machine guns. Hundreds, thousands, of dead civilians were left on the ground while we moved on to survive.

Then the Nazi tanks arrived. For us, there was no other option but to return to our village. We then spent two-and-a-half long years in the ghetto behind barbed wire. Two and a half years full of humiliation, pain, lice, and constant hunger.

More than 80 years have passed, but I still remember the taste of the water the occupiers poured out after washing the meat. For them, it was wastewater. But as five—to six-year-old children, we slipped through the barbed wire and risked our lives to beg for this delicious, greasy water. Maybe it was thanks to this water that we survived.

Seven of us children survived, four brothers and three sisters. When we could do no more than lie on the ground due to a severe form of dystrophia, we were rescued in the spring of 1944.

In Ukraine, there were around 2,000 places where more than one-and-a-half million Jews were shot, beaten to death, or burned by the SS, as the Wehrmacht before Auschwitz and other death factories went to their work of extermination.

According to historians, more than 25,000 children, women, and the elderly were buried in the Vinnytsia region, Bessarabia, Bukovina, and in my hometown of Bershad, alone. I saw these endless trenches of bodies with my own eyes.

I buried my 14-year-old brother Josef there, who slipped in winter and fell into the river while doing forced labour. But for the Germans, this was an attempted escape, and they shot him right in the ice-cold water.

My mother was already grief-stricken because she had lost her older son on the front, but they wouldn’t let her bury my brother for several days.

Friends, I was confronted with death many times, but I also experienced moments of kindness and solidarity in the ghetto. These moments helped us to persevere, not lose faith, and survive. To survive, to tell the world about the Holocaust, fascism, torture, and other horrors of war.

Unfortunately, most of them did not live to see the hour of rescue. Upholding the memory of Holocaust victims has become my life’s work.

I would like to thank the German Bundestag for this opportunity to come together here today to remember those we’ve lost.

To me, it is also important to establish a worthy memorial in my hometown, Odesa, where 25,000 inhabitants were burned alive just because they were Jews. During the night between October 22 and 23, 1941, Jews, the elderly, women, children, and younger people were herded into nine empty warehouses where ammunition had been stored before the war. These buildings were sprinkled with a highly combustible liquid and then set on fire.

The witnesses of this horrific event reported that cries of pain echoed everywhere. Mothers tried to save their children by throwing them out of little windows beneath the roof, while the Nazi’s henchmen tried to outperform each other in murdering. It is difficult for me to talk about it.

We are making plans for a memorial in this place of horror with the support of our German friends, and I  am convinced the people who perished in the hell of war will find a place in the hearts of future generations forever. The construction of this memorial has been interrupted by the Russian war of aggression, but I am sure this project will be completed.

Roman Shvartsman is giving a speech at the Bundestag

Since Russia started attacking our civilian population, our cities, and our energy system on February 24, 2022, our lives and our freedom have been in danger again. [Vladimir] Putin is trying to exterminate us as a nation, as [Adolf] Hitler tried to exterminate the Jewish people during World War II. Back then, Hitler wanted to kill me because I am a Jew. Now, Putin wants to kill me because I am a Ukrainian.

On December 29, 2023, our house was hit by a missile. Miraculously, I saved myself and my wife. We had sought shelter in the basement, but when we returned to the 10th floor, we didn’t recognise the flat. Everything was demolished.

Odesa, my hometown, is suffering immensely from the Russian terror. I am seeing devastation and misery all over again.

I see the faces of Ukrainian defenders who return after being held prisoners of war in Russia. Their stories about the Russian occupiers’ torture chambers give me phantom pain.

I was in the ghetto. I saw the devil, and I say we overestimate him a lot. His power is only as great as we allow it to be.

I would like to thank Germany for all the support over the last years, including the supply of military equipment. By no means must Ukraine be brought to its knees by the Russian forces.

There can be no peace without freedom and justice. People who believe that Putin will be satisfied with Ukraine are mistaken.

Ukraine needs air defence. Odesa needs air defence in order to protect its people and ports. We need aircraft in order to gain the upper hand in the air. We need more long-range missiles in order to incapacitate the Russian airports and missile depots, which are used to attack us every day. We need your support to liberate the people in the occupied territories.

The world must stop being afraid. Ukraine will do whatever it takes to prevent the war from reaching you.

Friends, it is our historical and moral obligation to make sure that no one suffers and no one is tortured.

I would like to ask you in this historic place today to continue to fight for Ukraine and my hometown, Odesa. We must do everything in our power to counter barbarism again. This is the only path towards peace and mutual understanding.

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I’m begging you to give us weapons to make Putin end this war of extermination. I was able to escape from extermination once. Now, I’m an old man, and I again fear that my children and grandchildren will fall victim to a war of extermination. 

The memory of the victims of National Socialism must guide us. This memory must oblige us to build a future where compassion and justice are not empty words.

Thank you for your attention.