At a memorial for death camps, Russian "megalomania" in the Ukraine war is mentioned.

A recent massacre in Ukraine by Russian soldiers has been linked by the head of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp memorial to similar misery endured during World War II.

The memorial site's director compared Nazi crimes to those Russians have recently committed in Ukrainian towns like Bucha and Mariupol as the world marked the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the camp established on Polish soil by Nazi Germany and where more than 1.1 million people, the majority of them Jews, died in gas chambers, starvation, cold, and disease.

"Similar sick megalomania, similiar hunger for power, similiar myths about greatness, primacy, and singularity… written only in Russian. In a speech delivered to a crowd that included Holocaust survivors on Friday, director Piotr Cywinski lamented the repeated mass murder of innocent people in Europe.

He referred to locations where mass murders occurred during World War II and regions where Ukraine and its allies accuse Russian forces of perpetrating atrocities, saying that Wola district in Warsaw, Zamojszczyzna, Oradour, and Lidice are now known as Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel, Mariupol, and Donetsk.

Being silent, according to Cywinski, "means giving voice to the criminals." He declared that being indifferent was equivalent to supporting murder.

"Russia has chosen to destroy Ukraine since it was unable to conquer it. Even as we stand here, we can see it every day.

The camp, which was established by Nazi Germany in 1940 in occupied Poland, grew to be the biggest of Adolf Hitler's extermination facilities.

Russian officials were not asked to participate in this year's commemorations despite the camp being liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945, during the Soviet Union's occupation of Ukraine.

The speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament, Valentina Matvienko, criticized that action as "cynical" on Friday.

In order to honor the victims' memories, she claimed, "they declined to invite the liberators." Naturally, this is highly concerning.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a post on Telegram on Thursday that the West was attempting to rewrite history and that "the remembrance of the horrors of Nazism and the Soviet heroes-liberators cannot be erased."

The 60th anniversary of the camp's liberation was commemorated in 2005, and on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated his assertion that Russian troops were engaged in combat with neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

This is demonstrated by the atrocities committed against civilians, the ethnic cleansing, and the punitive actions carried out in Ukraine by neo-Nazis. Our forces are valiantly fighting against such evil, Putin remarked.

"Repeating tragic events leads to forgetting the lessons of history," he remarked.

Holocaust survivors lit candles on the remains of a gas chamber on Friday as part of commemorations while donning caps and scarves with the blue and white stripes of camp uniforms.