World leaders gather in Jerusalem to remember Holocaust

Dozens of world leaders gathered on 22 January in Jerusalem for a three-hour-long ceremony focused on commemorating the Holocaust and combating rising modern-day anti-Semitism.
The World Holocaust Forum coincides with the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. The attendees included Russian president Vladimir Putin, French president Emmanuel Macron, the presidents of Germany, Italy and Austria, as well as US Vice President Mike Pence. Israel’s president Reuven Rivlin asked the attendees to “leave history for the historians”.
However, the event did not go without tensions. Putin said that “when it comes to the tragedy of the Holocaust, 40% of tortured and killed Jews were Soviet Union Jews”.” So this is our common tragedy in the fullest sense of the word”, he added.
Poland’s president Andrzej Duda has boycotted the gathering because he was not invited to speak. Tensions between Russia and Poland are rising over Poland’s role in the World War II. Putin has previously blamed the Western powers for allying with Adolf Hitler, and has citied documents in which, according to him, the Polish ambassador in Germany “expressed full solidarity with Hitler in his anti-Semitic views”.
“We mustn’t for even one second blur the sacrifice and the contribution of the former Soviet Union in defeating the Nazi monster”, said Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also used the opportunity to condemn Iran: “I am concerned that we have yet to see a unified and resolute stance against the most anti-Semitic regime on the planet, a regime that openly seeks to develop nuclear weapons and annihilate the one and only Jewish state”, he added.
The event is a project of Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress, which represents Jewish communities across Europe. It was widely criticized about inviting elites, while not including enough Holocaust survivors.