THE SPEECHES OF MIKE PENCE AND VLADIMIR PUTIN AT THE 5TH WORLD HOLOAUST FORUM IN JERUSALEM ON JANUARY 23

Here is the full text of US Vice President Mike Pence's speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum

"President Rivlin, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Your Majesties, Presidents, Excellencies, honored survivors and distinguished guests: It is deeply humbling for me to stand before you today, on behalf of the American people, as we mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

"On this occasion, here on Mount Herzl, we gather to fulfill a solemn obligation – an obligation of remembrance: to never allow the memory of those who died in the Holocaust to be forgotten by anyone, anywhere in the world.

"The word 'remember' appears no fewer than 169 times in the Hebrew Bible – for memory is the constant obligation of all generations.

"And today we pause to remember what President Donald Trump rightly called the "dark stain on human history" – the greatest evil ever perpetuated by man against man in the long catalogue of human crime.

"The faces of a million and a half children reduced to smoke under a silent sky for the crime of having a single Jewish grandparent. The night Elie Wiesel called "seven times sealed" consumed the faith of so many then, and challenges the faith of so many still.

"Today we remember what happens when the powerless cry for help and the powerful refuse to answer.

"The town’s name was Oswiecim. As part of their plan to destroy the very existence of Polish culture, the Nazis gave Polish towns German names. And this one they called Auschwitz.

"When soldiers opened the gates of Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, they found 7,000 half-starved, half-naked prisoners, hundreds of boxes of camp records that documented the greatest mass murder in history. Before the war was over, in its five years of existence, more than 1.1 million men, women, and children would perish at Auschwitz.

"As my wife and I can attest firsthand, from this past year, one cannot walk the grounds of Auschwitz without being overcome with emotion and grief. One cannot see the piles of shoes, the gas chambers, the crematoriums, the lone boxcar facing the gate to the camp, and those grainy photographs of men, women, and children being sent to their deaths without asking: "How could they?"

"Today we mourn with those who mourn and grieve with those who grieve. We remember the names and the faces and the promise of the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.

"Today we also pay tribute to those who survived, who all these years have borne witness to that evil and have served mankind by their example.

"And today we honor and remember the memory of all the Allied forces, including more than 2 million American soldiers, who left hearth and home, suffered appalling casualties, and freed a continent from the grip of tyranny.

"And, finally, we pay tribute to the memory of those non-Jewish heroes who saved countless lives – those the people of Israel call the "righteous among the nations."

"In an age of indifference, they acted. In an age of fear, they showed courage. And their memory and their example should kindle anew the flame of our hearts to do the same in our time.

"We must be prepared to stand as they did against the wave of their times. We must be prepared to confront and expose the vile tide of anti-Semitism that is fueling hate and violence all across the world. And we must stand together.

"In that same spirit, we must also stand strong against the leading state purveyor of anti-Semitism, against the one government in the world that denies the Holocaust as a matter of state policy and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The world must stand strong against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

"And, finally, we must have the courage to recognize all the leaders and all the nations that are gathered here that, today, we have the responsibility and the power to ensure that what we remember here today can never happen again.

"Mr. Prime Minister, as we honor and remember the 6 million Jewish martyrs of the Holocaust, the world can only marvel at the faith and resilience of the Jewish people, who just three years after walking in the valley of the shadow of death, rose up from the ashes to reclaim a Jewish future and rebuild the Jewish State.

"And I’m proud to say, as Vice President of the United States, that the American people have been with you every step of the way since 1948. And so we will remain.

"As President Trump declared in his historic visit to Jerusalem, the bond between our two peoples is 'woven together in the fabric of our hearts.' And so it shall always be.

"Today we remember not simply the liberation of Auschwitz but also the triumph of freedom – a promise fulfilled, a people restored to their rightful place among the nations of the Earth. And we remember – we remember the long night of that past, the survivors and the faces of those we lost, the heroes who stood against those evil times. And today we gather nearly 50 nations strong, here in Jerusalem, to say with one voice: Never again.

"Through pogroms, persecutions, and expulsions in the ghettos, and finally, even though the death camps, the Jewish people clung to an ancient promise that He would 'never leave you or forsake you' and that he would leave this person to inherit the land that he swore to your ancestors that he would give them.

"And so, today, as we bear witness to the strength and the resilience and the faith of the Jewish people, so too we bear witness to God’s faithfulness to the Jewish people.

"May the memory of the martyrs be enshrined in the hearts of all humanity for all time.

"May God bless the Jewish people, the State of Israel, the United States, and all the nations gathered here.

"And may he who creates peace in the heavens create peace for us and for all the world.

"Oseh shalom bimromav. Hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu. V’al kol Yisrael V’imru. Amen."
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Here is the full text of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum

"Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, colleagues, friends, ladies and gentlemen.

"Today we are brought together at the international forum to honor the victims of the Holocaust by a shared responsibility, our duty to the past and the future.

"We mourn all the victims of the Nazis, including the six million Jews tortured in ghettos and death camps and killed cruelly during raids. Forty percent of them were citizens of the Soviet Union, so the Holocaust has always been a deep wound for us, a tragedy we will always remember.

"Before visiting Jerusalem, I looked through original documents, reports by Red Army officers after the liberation of Auschwitz. I must tell you, colleagues, it is very difficult, unbearable to read these military reports, documents describing in detail how the camp was set up, how the cold-blooded killing machine worked.

"Many of them were hand-written by soldiers and officers of the Red Army on the second or third day after the liberation of the prisoners and convey the shock that the Red Army soldiers and officers experienced from what they saw there, from testimonies that caused pain, indignation and compassion.

"Red Army Field Marshal Konev, who then led the military operation to capture the densely populated Silesian industrial region of Germany, used tactics to spare as many civilians as possible and, having received a report about the atrocities committed at Auschwitz, forbade himself from even seeing this camp. Later he wrote in his memoirs that he had no right to lose his moral strength so that a fair sense of revenge would not have blinded him during military operations and would not have caused additional suffering and casualties among the civilian population of Germany.

"Jan. 27 marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In this hell, where people from different countries were brought for torture, monstrous experiments and mass killing, hundreds of thousands of people of different ethnicities died. More than half of them were Jews.

"The crimes committed by the Nazis, their deliberate, planned, and as they said, 'final solution to the Jewish issue,' is one of the darkest and most shameful pages of modern world history.

"But we should not forget that this crime also had accomplices. They were often crueler than their masters. Death factories and concentration camps were served not only by the Nazis, but also by their accomplices in many European countries.

"In the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, where these criminals were operating, the largest number of Jews were killed. Thus, about 1.4 million Jews were killed in Ukraine, and 220,000 people were killed in Lithuania. I draw your attention, friends, to the fact that this is 95 percent of the pre-war Jewish population of this country. In Latvia, 77,000 Jewish people were killed. Only a few hundred Latvian Jews survived the Holocaust.

"The Holocaust was a deliberate annihilation of [a] people. But we must remember that the Nazis intended the same fate for many other peoples. Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles and many other peoples were declared Untermensch. Their land was meant to serve as living space for the Nazis, providing for their prosperous existence, while the Slavs and other peoples were meant either to be exterminated or to become slaves without rights, culture, historical memory, and language.

"Back in 1945, it was first of all the Soviet people who put an end to these barbaric plans. As it has just been said, they protected their Fatherland and liberated Europe from Nazism. We paid a price no nation could even imagine in their worst dreams: a toll of 27 million deaths.

"We will never forget this. The memory of the Holocaust will serve as a lesson and a warning only if it remains fully intact, without any omissions. Unfortunately, today the memory of war and its lessons and legacy often fall subject to the immediate political situation. This is completely unacceptable. It is the duty of current and future politicians, state and public figures to protect the good name of the living and fallen heroes, civilians, and victims of the Nazis and their allies.

"We must use everything we have – our informational, political and cultural capabilities as well as the reputation and influence our countries have in the world – to this end. I am sure that everyone present here today, in this audience, shares these concerns and is ready to protect truth and justice together with us.

"We are all responsible for making sure that the terrible tragedies of this war will not happen again, that the generations to come will remember the horrors of the Holocaust, the death camps and the siege of Leningrad – Prime Minister Netanyahu has just said that today a monument to the victims of the siege was unveiled here in Jerusalem – Babi Yar, and the burned-down village of Khatyn, remember that we must remain alert and must not overlook when the first seeds of hate, chauvinism, and antisemitism take root, or when people start to indulge in xenophobia or other similar manifestations.

"Destruction of the past and lack of unity in the face of threats can lead to terrible consequences. We must have the courage to be straight about this and do everything to defend peace.

"I think an example could and should be set by the founding countries of the United Nations, the five powers that bear special responsibility for the preservation of civilization.

"We have discussed this with several of our colleagues and, as far as I know, have received a generally positive response to holding a meeting of the heads of state of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: Russia, China, the United States, France, and Britain. We can hold it in any country, in any place that our colleagues would find convenient. Russia is ready for such a serious discussion. We intend to send this proposal to the leaders of the Five without delay.

"We are faced with many challenges. We discussed one of them recently at the initiative of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. This is about Libya. But we will have to return to this issue at the Security Council and adopt a relevant resolution.

"There are many other problems as well. I consider it important and symbolic to hold the proposed meeting this year. After all, we are celebrating 75 years since the end of World War II and the foundation of the United Nations.

"A summit of the states that made the main contribution to the routing of the aggressor and the formation of the postwar world order can play a big role in searching for collective ways of responding to current challenges and threats and would demonstrate our common commitment to the spirit of allied relations, historical memory and the lofty ideals and values for which our predecessors, our grandfathers, and fathers fought shoulder to shoulder.

"In conclusion, I would like to thank our Israeli colleagues for a warm, very hospitable reception here in Jerusalem, and to wish peace, prosperity and all the best to everyone at the conference, and, of course, to the citizens of Israel.

"Thank you."

EDITOR’S NOTE: Putin brought up a good point when he mentioned the fact that many people in the countries occupied by the Nazis collaborated with the Nazis in the slaughter of Jews.