Yad Vashem, Israel’s World Holocaust Remembrance Center, accused Russia of Holocaust distortion on Thursday, after Moscow established a new annual memorial day to commemorate the “genocide of the Soviet people” at the hands of the Nazis, without any mention of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law last month designating April 19 as the country’s official annual “Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People.”

The law, signed on December 29, came into effect on January 1, meaning that April 19, 2026, will be the first time that the day is officially observed in Russia.

Yad Vashem, in a statement published Thursday, said that the new Russian memorial day, “while omitting any mention of the heinous crime of the Holocaust perpetrated specifically against the Jewish people, is yet another distortion of history.”

“This new Russian law effectively erases the distinct Jewish dimension of the Shoah, despite the fact that they were the primary target of Nazi genocide,” it said, using the Hebrew term for Holocaust.

“While indeed........

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