There are moments when memory is not attacked, but captured.

This is the central problem with the “Immortal Regiment” as it is increasingly presented today. The issue is not whether families have the right to remember their dead. Of course they do. A photograph of a grandfather, a grandmother, a father, a mother, a soldier, a partisan, a nurse, a survivor — these are not propaganda by themselves. They are fragments of family history.

The problem begins when private grief is absorbed into a state ritual, surrounded by aggressive symbols, military slogans and the political mythology of a country that is waging a new war.

What once looked like a grassroots act of remembrance has, over the years, become something very different: a coordinated instrument of Russian state influence. In Russia and abroad, “Immortal Regiment” events are often supported or framed by official and semi-official structures: embassies, “Russian Houses,” military-historical organizations, pro-Kremlin cultural networks and diaspora groups loyal to Moscow’s narrative. These networks may include structures such as “Volunteers of Victory,” whose activities help standardize the symbols, language and emotional framing of the commemoration.

Abroad, such marches also serve another purpose: they produce images of supposed international support, later used by Russian media for domestic and external audiences.

That does not mean every participant is a propagandist. Many people come sincerely. They carry a family photograph. They remember a real person. They feel pain, pride, loss, gratitude.

But sincerity of motive does not erase the political use of the event.

One person may come with memory. The state machine leaves with a propaganda image.

From Remembrance to Ritual

The transformation of the “Immortal Regiment” is not only organizational. It is visual and emotional. The portraits are now often surrounded by Soviet and Russian symbols, red flags, St. George ribbons, military uniforms, portraits of Stalin, children dressed as soldiers, and slogans such as “We can repeat it.”

This phrase alone changes everything.

If the subject is the Second World War — the Holocaust, the mass graves, the destroyed cities, deportations, hunger, occupation, concentration camps and millions of dead — then the moral lesson cannot be “We can repeat it.” The only moral lesson is: we must not repeat it.

When portraits of Stalin appear in this space, the distortion becomes even sharper: a dictator responsible for mass terror is placed inside a ritual supposedly dedicated to human dignity and liberation.

For Jewish memory, this distinction is fundamental.

The language of “Never Again” is not the language of military triumph. It is the language of warning. It means that the memory of catastrophe must restrain us from dehumanization, imperial lies, mass violence and the transformation of human beings into material for the ambitions of the state.

When a war tragedy is turned into a cult of force, something essential is lost. The dead are no longer remembered as human beings. They become symbols in a political performance.

Russia’s Monopoly on Victory

The Second World War was not won by today’s Russian Federation. It was fought and won by many peoples and allied nations at an unbearable cost. Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Armenians, Georgians, peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia, as well as Americans, Britons, Europeans and many others fought, suffered and died. Millions were victims of Nazism. Millions were also victims of Stalinism.

Yet the Kremlin’s narrative increasingly presents Victory as if it were the private property of modern Russia.

This is not only historical simplification. It is political theft.

Moscow does not merely try to monopolize victory. It tries to monopolize grief. It decides who “remembers correctly” and who is supposedly betraying memory. Anyone who challenges the Kremlin’s version can be branded a “Russophobe,” a “fascist” or an enemy of the sacred past.

This mechanism has become especially dangerous since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin uses the language and symbols of the Second World War to justify a new war of aggression. Ukraine’s resistance is described as “Nazism.” Russian invasion is described as “liberation.” Bombed cities and occupied territories are placed inside a false mythology of 1945.

But victory over one evil does not give a state the right to become the source of another evil.

No memory of 1945 can justify the destruction of Mariupol, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnipro, Odesa, Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. No photograph of a frontline soldier can serve as moral permission for new occupations, new missiles, new mass graves and new funerals.

History knows this mechanism. Fascist Italy turned the memory of the fallen after World War I into a cult of heroic sacrifice. Nazi Germany used the trauma of defeat and the myth of betrayal to prepare society for revenge. Vichy France wrapped authoritarian politics in the prestige of Marshal Pétain, the hero of Verdun. The details differ, but the mechanism is familiar: grief becomes ritual, ritual becomes mobilization, and mobilization becomes permission for new violence.

The Jewish Question: What Does Memory Demand?

From a Jewish ethical perspective, the issue is not complicated: memory must lead to responsibility, not to the worship of war.

Judaism gives memory a central place. We remember the Exodus from Egypt not in order to glorify power, but in order to learn what it means to be vulnerable, enslaved and oppressed. The lesson is not: because we suffered, we may now dominate others. The lesson is the opposite: because we know suffering, we must be careful with power.

The same moral logic applies to the memory of the dead.

Judaism treats the dignity of the dead — kavod ha-met — with seriousness. A dead person is not a prop. A face, a name, a biography, a military photograph — these cannot be casually turned into political material. The dead cannot consent to being carried under slogans that justify a new war.

To carry a portrait of a relative in a private, dignified act of remembrance is one thing. To place that portrait inside a state ritual that serves a current war narrative is another.

That is the boundary.

Judaism does not forbid a portrait as a sign of memory. But Jewish ethics cannot accept turning a portrait of the dead into a political weapon.

This matters especially in Israel. The Jewish people know what it means when memory is used honestly — and what it means when history is manipulated. The Holocaust cannot be turned into decoration for a new cult of force. The Second World War cannot become a stage for those who shout “We can repeat it.”

For Jewish memory, the true answer is not “We can repeat it.”

The true answer is: we must not allow it to happen again.

One of the most disturbing elements of these events is the use of children in military costume.

A child dressed in a Soviet uniform or sailor outfit may look “touching” to an audience trained by propaganda. But what is being taught? Is the child learning about the fear of war, the hunger, the Holocaust, the destroyed families, the camps and the silence of those who survived? Or is the child being trained to perform military memory as loyalty to the state?

There is a deep difference between teaching history and staging children inside a war cult.

If a child is given a uniform, a ribbon and the emotional language of “We can repeat it,” this is not remembrance. It is rehearsal.

It teaches the child not the tragedy of war, but the beauty of mobilization.

Israel’s Uncomfortable Episode

Israel is not outside this story.

In 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took part in the “Immortal Regiment” march in Moscow alongside Vladimir Putin and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić. Netanyahu carried a portrait of Wolf Vilensky, a Jewish veteran of the Second World War and Hero of the Soviet Union who later lived in Israel.

At the time, the gesture could be explained as respect for Jewish soldiers who fought against Nazism. That memory is real and important. Jews fought in the Red Army, in the British Army, in the American Army, in partisan units and underground movements. They were not only victims of the Holocaust; they were also fighters against Nazism.

But after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that 2018 image reads differently.

Not because the memory of Jewish veterans has lost its meaning. On the contrary: precisely because that memory is so important, it must not be surrendered to the Kremlin’s political ritual.

It would be too simplistic to claim, without evidence, that Netanyahu acted under direct Russian pressure. The more accurate explanation is diplomatic context. At the time, Israel had to consider Russia’s military presence in Syria. Coordination with Moscow affected Israel’s freedom of action against Iranian entrenchment and Hezbollah-related threats near Israel’s northern border.

In other words, Netanyahu may have entered that ceremony through the logic of Israeli security and Jewish memory. The Kremlin used the image through the logic of propaganda.

That is exactly how symbolic politics works.

A foreign leader may arrive with one intention. Moscow receives another image: the leader of the Jewish state inside Russia’s state ritual of Victory.

This is why the “Immortal Regiment” is not only a Russian domestic issue. It is a trap for foreign leaders, diaspora communities and societies that enter with their own memories — and leave as part of someone else’s political picture.

Latrun: Israel’s Alternative

Israel does not need the Kremlin’s ritual in order to remember Jewish soldiers of the Second World War.

It has its own deeper and more honest framework of memory.

One of the most important examples is the Museum of the Jewish Soldier in World War II named after Chaim Herzog in Latrun — מוזיאון הלוחם היהודי. Located near the Yad La-Shiryon complex, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the museum tells a story that is too often pushed aside: the story of approximately 1.5 million Jews who served or volunteered in Allied armies, partisan units, underground movements, ghettos and resistance networks during the war.

It also honors the memory of roughly 250,000 Jewish soldiers who were killed.

This is a powerful Israeli answer to the Kremlin’s monopoly on victory.

Latrun reminds us that Jews were not only victims. They were soldiers, officers, partisans, fighters, underground activists and resisters. They fought in different uniforms, under different flags, on different fronts — in the Soviet Union, Britain, the United States, France, Poland and elsewhere. This also includes Jewish units and volunteers from Eretz Israel, including those who served in the British Army and in the Jewish Brigade, linking the wartime struggle against Nazism with the later foundations of Israel’s own defense tradition.

This kind of memory is military in subject, but not militaristic in spirit.

It does not shout. It does not threaten. It does not say “We can repeat it.” It says: here are the names, the faces, the biographies, the documents and the price.

That is the difference between remembrance and propaganda.

Ukraine and the Test for the Wider West and Israel

For Ukraine, this is not an abstract argument about symbols. Russia is using Second World War language while waging a present-day war. Ukrainian cities are being bombed while Moscow claims to be fighting “Nazism.” Ukrainian families are burying their dead while Russian state rituals insist on the exclusive moral ownership of 1945.

That is why May 9, 2026 will be a test for the wider West — the United States, Europe, other democratic societies — and for Israel as well.

The question is not whether people may remember their relatives. They may and they should. The question is whether Western societies, including the United States, Europe, other democratic countries and Israel, will allow the memory of victory over one aggressor to be used as cover for another aggressor — one that is destroying cities and killing civilians now.

Respect for memory does not require Russian state symbolism. It does not require aggressive slogans. It does not require children in uniform. It does not require portraits of dictators or the visual language of today’s war.

There are other ways.

Ceremonies without the flags of an aggressor. Readings of names. Museum programs. Family histories. Commemoration of all victims of Nazism and Stalinism. Jewish, Ukrainian, Polish, Baltic, Belarusian, Russian, Caucasian, American, British and wider European stories told honestly, without being absorbed into a current imperial project.

Such remembrance can also include victims of modern wars — in Ukraine, Syria, Chechnya, Georgia and elsewhere — without turning their suffering into a state cult.

If one public event is permitted, alternative voices must also be heard: Ukrainians whose cities are under attack, Jews who refuse the abuse of Holocaust memory, Israelis who understand the danger of turning remembrance into state propaganda, and all those who know that World War II does not belong to the Kremlin.

The formula is simple: we are for memory, but against its use to justify new wars.

Memory or Propaganda?

The difference is not always visible at first glance.

A photograph may be memory. A march may be propaganda.

A ribbon may be mourning. A ribbon may also become a political signal.

A child may be learning history. Or a child may be trained to perform loyalty to war.

That is why the question must be asked again and again: what does this act of remembrance serve?

Does it honor the dead as human beings? Or does it use them to justify new deaths?

Does it protect the living from another catastrophe? Or does it prepare them emotionally for one?

The memory of the Second World War belongs to many peoples. No state owns it. No government has the right to turn the faces of the dead into decoration for a new war.

The victims and fighters of that war deserve remembrance rooted in truth, dignity and responsibility.

The real question is not whether we remember the dead. The question is whether we allow their faces to be used as decoration for the next war.

They do not need the slogan “We can repeat it.”

They demand something else: do not allow it to be repeated.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)