Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Fifth World Holocaust Forum at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, Jan. 23, 2020. Photo: Abir Sultan / Pool via Reuters.

The controversy over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech at the World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem last month continued to simmer on Tuesday, as Yad Vashem took the unexpected step of apologizing for the pro-Russian slant of the event.

In a letter on Monday to the Hebrew-language edition of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Yad Vashem — the Jewish state’s national memorial to the Holocaust– expressed regret for the historical “inaccuracies” and “partial” facts contained in videos that were shown at the Forum on Jan. 23.

Critics of the videos said that the content focused on the Soviet Red Army’s role in defeating Nazi Germany at the expense of Britain, the United States and the other allies. Nor did the videos mention the August 1939 pact between Nazi Germany and the USSR that resulted in the wholesale partition of Poland.

“We apologize for the very unfortunate incident that happened,” Yad Vashem said in its letter. “Sadly, videos at the event, and particularly the one intended to summarize key points of World War II and the Holocaust, included inaccuracies and a partial portrayal of historical facts that created an unbalanced impression.”

In a nod to the torrid arguments over Holocaust responsibility that have erupted within and between several Eastern European countries, Yad Vashem also underlined its commitment “to the historical truth as far as possible, and to carrying out research that contradicts the attempts at blurring and distorting political discourse in various countries.”

Yad Vashem’s statement drew a furious response from at least one mass circulation newspaper that is fiercely loyal to Putin’s regime.

Writing in Moskovskij Komsomolets, columnist Alexander Rozensaft launched a scathing personal attack on Prof. Dan Michman, a respected Holocaust scholar who heads the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem. Accusing Michman of being a puppet for Polish President Andrzej Duda — who did not attend the Forum after his request to speak was refused — Rozensaft  asked why the professor felt the need to “repent.”

“It turns out [Michman] was haunted by the events of 1939,” Rozensaft asserted, before giving the official Russian explanation for the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

“The real situation that year was as follows: In response to the occupation of Poland, the Red Army came forward to meet the Nazi forces, who did not want to let the Nazis to the borders of the USSR,” Rozensaft claimed. “In parallel, Soviet soldiers rescued nearly a million Polish Jews by moving them from places destined for destruction to the interior of the USSR. There, by the way, my late grandmother, evacuated from Poland by Soviet soldiers, was saved too.”

Most historians say that no more than 300,000 Jews,  and not one million, were moved to the Soviet interior from Poland — including a significant number who were forcibly deported by the Russian authorities.

Poland’s pre-war Jewish population stood at 3 million, 90 percent of whom perished in the Holocaust.