I feel obligated to remark a general comment, especially with regard to my background and family roots.
I am the descendant of a Jewish-Austrian family who was forced to flee Austria during the Nazi annexation and whose property was confiscated and returned only many years later.
At every meeting of this kind, in this place, it is important to emphasize that the Jewish people, wherever they are, will never forget the historic role that the Red Army, and the Russian people in general, had in the eradication of the Nazi beast. The last of the survivors of the concentration camps still live among us in Europe, in the U.S and in Israel; the survivors who for all these years, and till the day they die will never forget the Red Army soldiers breaking through the gates of the concentration camp freeing the prisoners. As one of them told me, it was a "rebirth".
There is a "sacred alliance" caste in blood between the Jewish and the Russian nations from those days, and whatever the differences of opinion between them, in general and in current events,this historic alliance must be remembered and must lead the fundamental ties between the Jewish and the Russian nations.
The Jewish nation will never forgive its enemies and will never forget its saviors. And in this spirit we should examine the issues raised by the meeting participants.