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| Jewish victims of a Ukrainain pogrom in 1919 (TOI) |
I don’t think so – despite the fact that I am fully supportive of worldwide efforts to end Putin’s war on the Ukraine. The truth of history is important. We learn from that truth.
I recently said that I was conflicted about my support for the Ukrainian people. Even though I do not retract that support, my reservations were based on their antisemitic past – verified to me by the personal experiences of my own father, brother, and father in law who grew up and lived there.
The hatred of Jews by the Ukrainian people was second to none. Including that of Nazi Germany. The only real difference being that the Germany’s highly educated and technologically advanced society was better able to devise the extermination machinery and - combined with earlier more ‘traditional’ means of mass murder - was able to exterminate 6 million of us!
Had the Ukrainians been able to devise those methods themselves, it would not be a stretch to imagine they would have done the same thing. It is also accurate to say that the Holocaust era Ukrainians were Hitler’s willing executioners. This has been recently pointed out by Ofer Aderet feature write for Ha’aretz. Which is indicated by the subtitle of his recent article:
Apart from a handful of Righteous Gentiles, many Ukrainians hunted down Jews, turned them over to the Nazis and even murdered them with their own hands.
There is a lot of unequivocal evidence of Ukraine’s virulent antisemitism aside from the anecdotal evidence I was personally told about. Last December, University of Michigan history and Judaic studies professor Jeffrey Veidlinger was interviewed by Rich Tenorio in the Times of Israel. Veidlinger had published In the Midst of Civilized Europe - a book describing in detail the holocaust that took place in the Ukraine 20 years before the one Hitler was responsible for. As the subtitle notes:
Jeffrey Veidlinger revisits the brutal violence in 1918-1921 that portended a genocide of Europe’s Jews, and was soon overshadowed by it
My mixed feelings about the Ukraine are thus corroborated. Their antisemitism was not insignificant. Nor was it on the fringes. The 100 thousand innocent Jewish victims in the Ukraine during early 20th century testifies to that.
So the question is, how can I support or have any sympathy for a genocidal country like the Ukraine? Was Putin’s reference to Ukraine’s Nazism that far off?
Of course it was. The Ukraine of today is not the Ukraine of the Holocaust. Ukrainians no longer view us worthy of extermination and torture – the way their grandparents did. Otherwise they would never have elected a Jewish President in a landslide. They also have a Holocaust memorial located in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv that is dedicated to the Jewish victims of Babi Yar – a Nazi death camp. Which was almost hit by Russian bombs earlier today. And the Ukraine currently has a robust Jewish community
This is not to say that anitisemitism is entirely dead there. It is alive and well – expressed by extremist right wing political groups. But electing an openly Jewish President in a landslide tells me that the tide has turned - for reasons expressed earlier - mostly having to do with a more enlightened and tolerant youth that places no stock in racism or prejudice.
I have no clue what the typical Ukrainian actually thinks privately about the Jewish people. Or how many of them are enlightened along those lines. But my guess is that to the extent that it exists - it is at its lowest level considering their Jewish leader has achieved hero status via his leadership under the duress of war.
But even if I’m wrong about this and the antisemitism is still there – just beneath the surface, I am still supportive of all efforts to thwart Putin. The world cannot allow a despot like Putin to freely invade a neighboring democracy without the slightest provocation and take it over. The people of the Ukraine are bravely defending themselves as best tey can – using Molotov Cocktails against missiles and tanks. And they have succeeded in staving off Putin’s takeover of their country. The US and the rest of the civilized world are doing the right thing in sanctioning Russia to the point of bringing it to its knees. As the President pointed out last night in his State of the Union address. Putin has no idea what’s coming.
I cannot say that today, I am a Ukrainian. This is something I might say in solidarity with a democracy under siege. Too much history there. But I am fully supportive doing everything we can to repulse Putin’s attack against the Ukrainian people and restoring the peace.
