The International Committees of Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camps have issued an urgent plea to stop the war in Ukraine immediately.

The statement explains that the Nazis registered Russians and Ukrainians under the same category of prisoners. They had to face the same deprivations, humiliations and life-threatening situations. “They could only rely on the solidarity between deportees to survive. All of them had had their share in the common struggle against the Nazi aggressor, as citizens of the Soviet Union.”

The statement also explains that new nation-states have emerged but adds that the

common history and the human bonds forged by history do not stop at national borders. None of those who suffered the war, none of those who carry the painful legacy, can bear the prospect of a return to tragic times.

The Statement appears on the website of Comité International de Dachau. Dachau is a town near Munich, Germany which today has a population of under 50,000 persons. The Dachau camp, which was established in 1933, served as a model for all later concentration camps. The number of prisoners incarcerated in Dachau between 1933 and 1945 exceeded 200,000.

The number of prisoners who died in the camp and its subcamps between 1940 and 1945 was at least 28,000. This number does not include those who perished there between 1933 and the end of 1939, as well as an unknown number of unregistered prisoners. It is unlikely that the total number of victims who died in Dachau will ever be known.

On April 29 1945, American troops liberated the survivors. My father was among the them.