Vladimir Putin wants to rehabilitate Stalin’s pact with Hitler

MORE THAN a million people, 90% of them Jews, had been murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau by the time the Soviet army liberated it on January 27th, 1945. The biggest German death camp in Poland is a universally acknowledged symbol of Nazi evil. Yet the 75th anniversary of its liberation has become a political battleground.

One ceremony to commemorate it will be hosted by Poland on January 27th at the site of the camp. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, will boycott it. Another took place four days earlier at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. Andrzej Duda, Poland’s president, boycotted that one because Mr Putin was asked to give a speech and he was not. (Yad Vashem said only liberating countries’ leaders could speak—though they included Germany.)