Jewish-progressive, humanist, and democratic organizations, institutions, entities, and individuals make this declaration because the history of the military defeat of fascism has been told by the West, and that is the narrative the majority learns. In that history, the United States is the major figure, and it is therefore imperative, in these times when the global Right advances brutally, to have access to this counter-hegemonic historical information.

This 9th of May we celebrate the victory of humanity—of those whose pillars are universal human rights—over fascism (and Nazism), and in that celebration we emphasize the essential and definitive participation of the Red Army and the Soviet people.

Probably never in history has the epic confrontation between the principles of life and the cruel impulse of death been more evident. Eight decades ago, what was perhaps the most important victory over brutality and cruelty was achieved by the strength and spirit of struggle based in a people’s conscience and a model of society.

Imperial capitalism, the legacy of the Berlin Conference of 1884 in which the colonial powers divided up the world, resulted in the two world wars that in turn involved more ethic displacements and genocides.

Adolf Hitler was not just a product of the ultraright German reaction. Prior to the start of the Second World War, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, and Oliveira Salazar spread their repressive policies in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Across almost all of eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltic states) and Finland there existed authoritarian regimes with antisemitic policies. The fight against the advance of the USSR and socialism was the shortsighted motive for which the principal Western powers of the era did not oppose the Nazi invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938; that moment, which finally resulted in the invasion of Poland in 1939, marked the beginning of the Second World War.

The Battle of Stalingrad (July 1942 to February 1943) changed the course of the Great Patriotic War, as the Soviets called the conflict. That epic and heroic resistance enabled the beginning of the counteroffensive that ended in Berlin on May 8 at 23:01—the morning of May 9, in Moscow. That day, Nazi field marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed the surrender before marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov.

Victory was achieved through the indescribable sacrifice of the Soviet people, of its soldiers, and of the civil society that also offered the world the second socialist state. (We remember the brief Paris Commune of 1871).

In the war, fifty-four million victims died, among them six million Jews. The Nazis also persecuted religious and political opponents (socialists, democrats, liberals, communists, unionists), Roma, queer people, disabled people, and others. The Soviet Union gave the lives of twenty-eight million of its citizens defending their hopeful project, one based on the ideal of a better society. And it accomplished it—with mistakes, failings, and blunders—while victim of the most brutal imperial aggressions of the West. We also remember the courage of the partisans, resistance fighters, civilians, and Righteous Among the Nations who risked their lives and saved thousands.

The massacres of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the perverse epilogues of this process of inter-imperial disputes.

Eight decades have passed since the victory of the Red Army, which preserved the lives of hundreds of millions of people. That brave effort, mostly Soviet, protected the world from the Nazi-Fascist barbarity.

In memory of this feat, we commit to three essential tasks: honoring those who fought for the most sacred values of life, being vehemently coherent with their legacy, and assuming as our own the fights—present and future—against absolute evil: fascism in all its forms.

FOR THE IDEOLOGICAL DEFEAT OF FASCISM.

WE DON’T FORGET; WE DON’T FORGIVE.

NO PASARÁN.

MIR ZAYNEN DO.