Film screening “Sobibor”

Ambassador Gatilov,
Mr. Zvyagintsev,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is my privilege to welcome you to the Palais des Nations on behalf of the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, Mr. Michael Møller, for this very special event on the eve of Europe Day which is also the Day when the bloodiest conflict in human history came to an end in Europe. We are marking this Day with a brand new feature film. The film is a horrific depiction of man’s propensity to inflict unimaginable inhumanity upon his fellow man, but, importantly, it is at the same time an uplifting tribute to the human spirit and its indomitable resistance to tyranny, brutality and evil.

Разрешите выразить благодарность Постоянному Представительству Российской Федерации и лично Постоянному Представителю Российской Федерации, Чрезвычайному и Полномочному Послу, Геннадию Михайловичу Гатилову, за организацию, вскоре после вступления в должность, столь весомoго, резонансного и значительного вклада в программу культурной дипломатии Женевского отделения ООН.

The Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, Mr. Michael Møller, is unavoidably detained and regrets very much that he cannot be with us here today. He has asked me to present the following remarks on his behalf:

“Ambassador Gatilov,
Mr. Zvyagintsev,
Ladies and gentlemen:

The name Sobibor, an extermination camp erected in 1942 on Polish territory, close to the borders with Belarus and Ukraine, stands for the unimaginable horrors of World War II. If you were sent there, you were meant to suffer - from creeping starvation, from untreated typhoid or dysentery and from the pains of excruciatingly hard labour, and that is if you were lucky. But mostly, you were shipped there to die - up to 250,000 people, almost all Jews, died in Sobibor’s gas chambers.

But, the name Sobibor also stands for hope, for the daring of the inmates to rise above their fate and to achieve the unimaginable. An uprising, planned under the leadership of the Soviet officer Alexander Pechersky, so masterfully portrayed by Konstantin Khabensky, led to the escape of some 400 inmates. True, many of them were hunted down by the Nazis and killed, but others managed to join the partisans. Some 50 participants of the Sobibor escape survived to the end of the war. It is thanks to them that the story of Sobibor and its uprising is known to the world.

The film “Sobibor” opened in Russian movie theatres on May 3. We are very pleased that its first showing in Switzerland is in Geneva, at the Palais des Nations. While this film takes us back into history, so we never forget the horrors of the past, it also reminds us that those horrors did not go unchallenged, that their perpetrators were not invincible.

The United Nations was born out of the devastation of World War II and it was shaped in the conviction that a future in peace could be achieved as a result of a joint global effort. Its determination to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” is written into its DNA.

Today, more than seven decades later, unfortunately, we are not in a position to be complacent. This is a time to redouble our efforts to bring peace to those areas of the world were conflict reigns and to make sure that every child, every woman and every man have a fair chance of returning to a life of dignity, one where they can fulfill their potential and dreams.

This is the promise Member States made when they adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. And it is a promise for which we will be held accountable by those who have seen the horrors of the modern-day killing fields, as much as by the generations who will live on our planet in the decades to come.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me express my sincere gratitude to Ambassador Gatilov for his first contribution to the cultural programme of UNOG so early in his tenure and to the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation for bringing this film to the Palais des Nations. We are privileged to have with us today the creative producer of the film, Mr. Alexander Zvyagintsev. I very much appreciate the continued contribution of the Russian Federation to the cultural diplomacy programme of the United Nations in Geneva, bringing to the fore exquisite pieces of art, music, or as today, film.

Thank you all for being here with us today and please enjoy the screening.”

End of the Director-General’s message. Let me join him in wishing you an uplifting screening.

Thank you very much.