Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and the president of the Russian Jewish Congress discussed preparations Monday for the upcoming Second World Holocaust Forum, the RJC press service said.
The Second World Holocaust Forum is due to take place near Kiev in September 2006.

“The Holocaust is a tragedy not only for the Jewish people but also a world tragedy,” the Ukrainian president said at a meeting in his official residence in Kiev.

Yushchenko praised the social activism of Jewish public organizations in Ukraine and throughout the world.

RJC President Vyacheslav Kantor described the upcoming forum at Babiy Yar as “a platform on which world leaders could unite in their joint efforts to fight against the rising danger of xenophobia and racial intolerance that are developing against the backdrop of weakening historical memory and Holocaust denial.”

Babiy Yar, a large ravine on the northern edge of Kiev, is the site of a mass grave of victims, mostly Jews, massacred by the Nazis in World War II.

Kantor thanked the Ukrainian president for paying close attention to the issue and the country’s efforts to study the issue comprehensively.

“We citizens of Europe, including in Russia and Ukraine, are doing this not simply on behalf of the Jews but on behalf and in the name of all those who have fought Nazism in all of its forms, past or present,” Kantor said.

RIA Novosti