Azerbaijan’s president sent a special Holocaust Remembrance Day message to the country’s Jews. “On the day of national grief of the Jewish people, on behalf of the Azerbaijani people, I share your pain. Let all the innocent victims of the Holocaust rest in peace,” President Ilham Aliyev stated in his message Wednesday, according to media reports. “Having experienced many national tragedies throughout history, the Jewish people were subjected to a brutal genocide during World War II. Millions of people became innocent victims of fascism, which didn’t even spare children, women and old men,” the message read. Azerbaijan is a secular Muslim state, and Aliyev recently has been courting the international Jewish community in what is seen as an attempt to win U.S. political support in his country’s lingering territorial dispute with neighboring Armenia. Later this month, a World Jewish Congress delegation is slated to visit Azerbaijan for political meetings and a conference on Jewish life in the region organized by the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress.
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