Ukraine

The Defending History Community’s Statement on Putin’s Barbaric Assault on Ukraine (and the Free World)


[UPDATE — STATEMENT ORIGINALLY ISSUED ON 25 FEB. 2022]

Renewing our call of 25 Feb. 2022:

The Defending History community joins in calling for immediate restoration of peace and security for all the people of Ukraine, condemning unequivocally the savage and medievally barbaric invasion — and rain of death and destruction with mass murder and terrorization of a peaceful civilian population — by the neighboring big power, led by our century’s most dangerous and deranged warmonger dictator. Ukraine’s victory will be the victory of the free and democratic world everywhere, as will the fall of the Putinist regime of dictatorship, invasion, and mass murder of civilians.

As a small gesture of spiritual solidarity, our Yiddish Studies team has constructed a modest new collection of videos of Ukraine’s last Yiddish speaking survivors. Ukraine alone spans every modern dialect of the language.


See DH’s UKRAINE SECTION

Note: In response to onslaughts of attempts at defamation and personal destruction (including from  far-right and neo-nazi groups), it can be useful to provide a screenshot (just below) of a front page text we introduced early in 2014, at first intermittently, and now for many years consistently. Years before that, our earlier (2011) reply was sent to a much more academically nuanced version of the Red Libel in a major Lithuanian journal of political science  (it was, at the insistence of the late Prof. L. Donskis, finally posted on their website, but never carried, or we believe, mentioned, in the print edition; please check). The text is available in DH.

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President Zelensky Dismisses Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany after Shameful Public Bandera Worship



UKRAINE  |  GLORIFICATION OF HOLOCAUST COLLABORATORS

VILNIUS—The New York Times reports today that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has dismissed his country’s ambassador to Germany after the ambassador’s worshipful antics glorifying the World War II Hitlerist, fascist figure Stepan Bandera, who was the leader of groups that murdered hundreds of thousands of Polish and Jewish civilians in Ukraine.

See G. Rossolinski-Liebe’s authoritative study of Bandera’s Hitlerist history and the racist, fascist leader’s inspiration of hundreds of thousands of murders of Polish and Jewish civilians. See also Erika Solomon’s update in the New York Times.

Defending History was ahead of the curve. See from earlier years our Bandera section and some of Dr. Rossolinski-Liebe’s earlier writings in Defending History; DH’s Collaborators Glorified section for the wider context of the issue in contemporary Eastern Europe (more details on Sections page).

 

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Ottawa Citizen & N.Y. Times Break Media Silence on Self-Damage of Eastern NATO/EU Democracies by Public-Space Adoration of Holocaust Collaborators



OPINION  |  MEDIA WATCH  |  GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS  |  LATVIA  |  UKRAINE  |  RIGA MARCHES

by Dovid Katz

Mainstream Western media has, it seems, finally begun to “notice a detail” that has been rather inscrutable to the wider public. Ukraine is a country where in 2019, 73.22% of voters chose a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky in the second and final round of voting, a result verily impossible in any of today’s great Western democracies, including the United States and Britain. Indeed a Jewish president whose family boasts proud World War II veterans of the Holocaust-era Red Army’s and the Allies’ struggle against Hitler. That is no “pro-fascist” country. Period, full stop. Having been a regular visitor to Ukraine for a period spanning more than a decade (for Yiddish expeditions and sometimes delightful conferences), I can attest to the open, welcoming, multiethnic and multicultural tolerance and grand humor of this great country’s people.

What is the upshot? That just as elsewhere in pro-Western Eastern Europe, a small but disproportionately powerful coterie of far-right pseudo-patriotic history rewriters, among them highly educated and sophisticated historians, politicians and state apparatchiks, all Holocaust revisionists in their passion to have as national heroes Hitler collaborators, have done so much harm to their own countries. It’s enough to peruse Defending History’s sections on Croatia, EstoniaHungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and more (see Countries). Incidentally, the motivation of these small, overly influential elites is (mis)guided by two forms of racism: inability to concede their nations’ leaders acted wrongfully during the Holocaust (what country’s history has no dark spots?), and the demented desire for a (supposedly) ethnically pure country (in other words, quiet satisfaction with the results of accomplished ethnic purification).

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Meet the Nationalist Custodian of Ukraine’s New “Virtual Necropolis”



OPINION  |  GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS  |  UKRAINE   |  UNITED STATES

by Moss Robeson

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day this year, The Forward published a shocking collection of articles by Lev Golinkin, a friend of Defending History, called the “Nazi Collaborator Monument Project.” As the most comprehensive survey of such monuments around the world it should be a catalyst for an international reckoning with the continued glorification of Holocaust perpetrators in the 21st century. 

Less than a week earlier, Jerusalem Post reporter Jeremy Sharon shed light on a very different sort of project after exploring a digital cemetery being constructed by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINP). Launched in November 2020 for Ukrainians buried abroad, the “Virtual necropolis of the Ukrainian emigration” is far from complete, but is already stacked with Nazi collaborators, including “senior auxiliary police unit officials” who massacred Jews.

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Tale of Two Lands: Ukraine’s and Lithuania’s State Policies of Glorifying Holocaust Collaborators Treated Very Differently by Israel’s Foreign Ministry?



Israel’s Ambassador Joel Lion in Ukraine Boldly Condemns Annual Parade Glorifying Holocaust Collaborator Stepan Bandera; JTA’s Cnaan Liphshiz Reports

But at same time, Israeli Foreign Ministry colludes  to silence dialogue on glorification of Holocaust collaborators in Lithuania (including the “naming of 2021“); Wiesenthal Center’s Dr. Zuroff protests in Jerusalem Post

Lithuanian Parliament’s dedication of 2021 to memory of J. Lukša, alleged Kaunas 1941 killer is little mentioned after powerful protests by two Israeli citizens — WJC’s Dr. Laurence Weinbaum, and Yakov Faitelson, son of legendary anti-Nazi partisan hero and escaper from Kainas IX Fort Alex Faitelson.

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Is USAID Still Using American Tax Payer Dollars to Support Glorification of Holocaust Collaborators in Ukraine?



OPINION  |  GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS  |  UKRAINE   |  UNITED STATES

by Moss Robeson

USAID-sponsored 2017 Shadow Report: “Memory Policy Reform: Interim Results of Enforcement of the Decommunization Laws”

“It sounds like something straight out of the wackiest conspiracy sites on the internet — but it may be true,” began an overlooked article published by Defending History over two years ago which incredulously reported that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had allegedly played a role in the rehabilitation of Ukrainian Nazi collaborator war criminals.

Not only can that report now be confirmed — we’ll come back to that — but it can be said that the issue of USAID lending support to Ukrainian nationalist memory politics goes beyond what was already hard to believe. For starters, look no further than the recent Ukraine Reform Conference held in Kyiv on November 17-19 and 23-27, which concluded with a “national memory policy” panel. The eight day long forum was sponsored by the USAID, among other institutions.

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Renewed Debate in Canada over Statues and Memorials for Ukrainian Holocaust Collaborators


[UPDATED]

CANADA SECTION  |  EARLIER  RECORD OF DEBATES  |  UKRAINE SECTION  |  DEBATES ON STEPAN BANDERA  |  G. ROSSOLIŃSKI-LIEBE SECTION  |  PER ANDERS RUDLING SECTION

From Recent Media Coverage:

2020 BACKGROUND: Academic paper by Per Anders Rudling, “Long-Distance Nationalism: Ukrainian Monuments and Historical Memory in Multicultural Canada” in Sabine Marschall (ed.) Public Memory in the Context of Transnational Migration and Displacement: Migrants and Monuments (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2020, pp. 95-126).

___

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Israel’s Ambassador to Ukraine, Joel Lion, Speaks Out with Bold Integrity on Plans to Honor a Holocaust Collaborator



Ukraine: Where the Israeli Ambassador Stands Up with Integrity for What is Right

Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine, HE Joel Lion

See reports on HE Ambassador Joel Lion’s public stance in:  The Times of Israel  &  Kyiv Post. A “day and night contrast” with embassy in Lithuania?  Just different ambassadors, or a different Foreign Ministry policy?


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Ukraine’s State-Sponsored “Azov Battalion” Expands Use of Nazi-Inspired Symbols



KIEVOn September 22, Ukraine’s Azov Battalion had a ceremony honoring its fighters who were killed in combat in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass regions. It is natural for any military unit to honor its dead. But it is evident from the images on Azov’s own website that this ceremony used iconography that is disturbingly reminiscent of the 1930s Nuremberg rallies, including the use of searchlights, the banners with Waffen-SS stylized logos and the flames.

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The Question Fareed Zakaria Left Out of Interview with Ukraine’s President



OPINION  |  UKRAINE  |  MEDIA WATCH  |  COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED

by Dovid Katz

In this week’s (30 Sept.) edition of Fareed Zakaria GPS, the CNN host interviewed Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko. The conversation stressed Ukraine’s appreciable progress in spite of (in some sense — because of) Vladimir Putin’s aggression, revanchism and incessant mischief-making.

In a website supplement, the CNN host recently posted some tough questions on state corruption that he did indeed put to Ukraine’s leader. But did Fareed miss an opportunity to bring up something else, something that so much of the Western media is keeping under wraps to the point of rendering it strangely unmentionable?

Will a major Western journalist follow up with the Ukrainian president along the lines of:

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The Midnight Plane to Czernowitz: The 2018 International Yiddish Conference



OPINION  |  YIDDISH AFFAIRS  |  UKRAINE

by Saul Chapnick  

from today’s TIMES OF ISRAEL

Have you ever missed an anniversary, a birthday, or event and regretted it for years, or even a lifetime?  I have.  It was missing out in attending the 1908 International Conference on Yiddish Language that took place exactly 110 years ago this year at Czernowitz, a city that served as the regional capital of the Hapsburgs (modern day Chernivtsi, Ukraine).

You may ask even how was it distinctly possible that a man my age could have been around 110 years ago.  For the past nearly thirty years, I have immersed myself in learning about Jewish life and infrastructure in  prewar Europe, plus seeing what the role of Yiddish was, if at all, in that culture.  For most Jews of this age, modern history began with the Holocaust and the creation of the third commonwealth, the modern-day State of Israel.  Events like the Czernowitz Conference, or the Kishinev Pogroms, World War I or the Leo Frank affair are just not in our lexicon, even though they all occurred in the twentieth century, thus making them modern, not ancient, history.

As Jews, it is incumbent upon us to fulfill the obligation of “Zakhor,” “To Remember.”  We are to look back at our history and internalize it in such a way to feel just like we were there, and feel what our brethren felt.  This is just not reflected in our reading of the Passover Haggadah, but everything we do and say in life.  To do “Zakhor” means we have a fuller understanding of ourselves in order to be able to navigate the future. Zakhor enables us to be more comfortable with self.  That is why I went on a personal quest over the last 25 plus years to visit libraries, read books, make visits to Poland and Ukraine to meet with political leaders, rabbis, community leaders, and lay people so that I can learn and experience.

Czernowitz 1908 symbolized to me that turning point in Jewish history.  A part of me felt that I did spiritually attend that conference, but realistically, I knew that it was a physical impossibility.  Then, in July, Dovid Katz, a leading Yiddish scholar, posted in Facebook that he was invited to be the keynote speaker at the 2018 International Commemorative Conference of Yiddish Culture and Language at Czernowitz to mark the 110th anniversary of the very first conference.

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41 Ukrainian Jewish Leaders Issue Major Statement Countering PR Coverups for Glorification of Holocaust Collaborators & Rising Antisemitism



KIEV—As DH readers know, the government of Ukraine led by Volodymyr Viatrovych’s “Ukrainian Institute of National Memory” (UINP) has been engaged in a breathtaking campaign to whitewash the troubling backgrounds of two major World War Two fascist organizations, the OUN and UPA. While these organizations and their leaders are glorified by Ukraine for their fight against the Soviets, along the way they were also involved in mass atrocities against Jewish and Polish civilians. Moreover the OUN-UPA ideology was deeply antisemitic, and was based on Ukrainian Integral Nationalism (kind of a fancy way of saying: fascism). Viatrovych also seeks to glorify Ukrainian World War One-era nationalist leader Symon Petliura whose troops engaged in mass pogroms during the Russian Civil War which killed between thirty-five and fifty thousand Jews.

While not necessarily directly related to whitewashing agenda of “Historical Memory Commissar” Viatrovych, Ukraine has also seen an upsurge in major antisemitic incidents including the desecration of Holocaust memorial sites and monuments, frequently with the use of swastikas and other Nazi iconography.

After long remaining silent, Western leaders and major Jewish organizations seem to have finally noticed what’s going on. Fifty-seven US Congressmen recently signed an Open Letter condemning Ukraine, noting that much of this Holocaust revisionism is state-sponsored. The US Holocaust Museum also decried anti-Roma violence in Ukraine while noting that “he continuing effort led by the leadership of the government’s Ukrainian Institute of National Memory to praise certain leaders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and cleanse their murderous records raises doubts regarding the government’s intentions.” Meanwhile the World Jewish Congress has sharply critiqued Ukraine for the upsurge in desecrations of Holocaust memorials.

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Example from Ukraine: East European Holocaust Revisionism Feeds Directly Into Blatant Antisemitism



KIEV—Evidence continues to mount  that the noxious far-right, state-supported memory politics of Volodymyr Viatrovych’s “Ukrainian Institute of National Memory” are directly leading to growing antisemitism in Ukraine.

The mayor of a town in Western Ukraine says the current government is a “Muscovite-Yid.” What’s striking is how he cites how Vyatrovych’s Institute to embolden and legitimize his views:

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Ukraine’s “Institute of National Memory” Publishes a Holocaust Whitewash Book for Nation’s Educational Program



KIEV—As the Ukrainian Government continues its increasingly unrestrained state-sponsored Holocaust revisionism campaign led by Volodymyr Viatrovych’s Institute of National Memory (UINP), questions surrounding the Holocaust in Ukrainian education in post-Maidan Ukraine are increasingly coming up. Thanks to new research by the head of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, Eduard Dolinsky, some clear answers are taking shape. And the signs are, in some critics’ views, a cause for concern.

According to a new book released by Viatrovych’s institute, it appears that the government is determined to present what can only charitably called an alternative view of “history”. Entitled A Compilation of Methodological Recommendations for Commemorative Observances in General Educational Etablishments, UINP’s 220 page book reduces the history of the Holocaust to a mere footnote.

Dolinsky has revealed to the West the contours of the “history” to be provided to millions of Ukraine’s young people in the coming years. Its salient points become evident from a number of sample features:

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Ukraine Report Claims America’s USAID Program is Financing Glorification of Fascist Groups that Took Part in the Holocaust



It sounds like something straight out of the wackiest conspiracy sites on the internet — but it may be true. The US Government — through its main foreign aid agency the US Agency for International Development  (USAID) — may indeed be inadvertently funding the Ukrainian Government’s far-reaching project to whitewash and glorify the Hitlerist World War II era nationalist OUN and UPA organizations, whose hordes were responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jewish and Polish civilians.

Updates on Twitter: @DefendingHistor

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Arkady Vaispapir, Hero of Sobibor Revolt, Dies in Kiev at 96



OBITUARIES  |  UKRAINE

KIEV—The last surviving organizer of the revolt at Sobibor death camp Arkady Vaispapir, has died at th age of 96.

Vaispapir belied the unfortunate stereotype of Jews going quietly to their deaths. during the Holocaust. He was a Red Army soldier who was wounded in battle, captured by the Nazis and sent to Sobibor. Realizing they were doomed and with nothing to lose, Vaispapir and other Jewish inmates, led by a Jewish Red Army lieutenant named Alexander Pechersky  staged an effective and full-scale revolt against their SS guards. 

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More Fake News, Again from Ukraine and Once More — About the Holocaust



UKRAINE   |  US  |  MEDIA WATCH

While much is said in some American media outlets  about “fake news” in the US, the smallness of the matters being discussed might come into focus when compared with Ukraine, which is of late producing rather much fake news about the Holocaust and elementary points in World War II history.

As we reported back in October, Ukrainian media outlet Radio Svoboda — the Ukrainian arm of the US Government-funded arm of RFERL — posted a picture from the US Holocaust Museum. It is an image of Polish Jews being deported to a death camp. There was just one problem. Radio Svoboda claimed the picture was from 1949 of Ukrainians being deported to Siberia. In fact, so effective was Radio Svoboda’s forgery that President Poroshenko himself tweeted it claiming it showed Ukrainians being deported. To Poroshenko’s credit, his office took it down almost immediately after we pointed this out.

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Defending History Calls on Ukraine’s President to Publicly Rebuke Senior Official for “Dog Whistle” Advocating Antisemitic Violence



OPINION  |  GLORIFICATION OF PERPETRATORS  |  UKRAINE

In response to a protest from the World Jewish Congress, after the Ukrainian city of Vinnitsa unveiled a statue celebrating nationalist leader Symon Petliura — whose troops killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms between 1918 and 1921 — a regional official from the extremist Svoboda party threatened Jewish citizens. In a Facebook rant, the Svoboda official warned Jews opposed to the Petliura statue to fall in line or face the consequences. The Svoboda official stated that “the only time we comfortably coexisted with kikes is Koliyvishchyna,” a reference to an 18th century pogrom against Jews in Ukraine.

Related: Ukraine’s Minister for Infrastructure Plans to Build Actual “Road to Bandera”

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Ukraine’s Minister for Infrastructure Announces He’ll Actually Build — “The Road to Bandera”



OPINION  |  GLORIFICATION OF PERPETRATORS  |  UKRAINE  |  STEPAN BANDERA

As Ukraine’s Orwellian-sounding Ukrainian Institute of National Memory continues building a cult around such antisemitic World War II era nationalists as Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych — their forces were responsible for the murder of (at least) tens of thousands of Jews and Poles — some frankly surreal aspects come sharply into view. The latest though really takes the cake.

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Will Ukraine’s President Poroshenko Correct Abuse of Holocaust Photo?



UKRAINE  |  DOUBLE GENOCIDE  |  COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED

Ukraine’s “pro-Western” president Petro Poroshenko, who in 2014 proclaimed the founding of a Hitlerist fascist group as a national holiday, and in 2015 tweeted photos of himself in a uniform making a joke of fascist leader Stepan Bandera, whose hordes were responsible for the murders of (at least) tens of thousands of Jewish and Polish civilians on the basis of ethnicity, has just “done it again.”

“To be ‘pro-Western’ one must share Western values, not just geopolitical foes.”

—DefendingHistory.com

On Friday, Poroshenko tweeted a photograph which he claimed represented citizens of Western Ukraine being deported to Siberia in 1947. His tweet translates: “Today is the 70th anniversary of mass deportations of populations of western Ukraine to Siberia and northern regions of the former USSR.  We remember.”

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