Ukraine
Ukraine’s State-Sponsored “Azov Battalion” Expands Use of Nazi-Inspired Symbols
Israel’s Ambassador to Ukraine, Joel Lion, Speaks Out with Bold Integrity on Plans to Honor a Holocaust Collaborator
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Ukraine: Where the Israeli Ambassador Stands Up with Integrity for What is Right
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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?
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
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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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Is USAID Still Using American Tax Payer Dollars to Support Glorification of Holocaust Collaborators in Ukraine?
OPINION | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS | UKRAINE | UNITED STATES
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by Moss Robeson
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“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.
Tale of Two Lands: Ukraine’s and Lithuania’s State Policies of Glorifying Holocaust Collaborators Treated Very Differently by Israel’s Foreign Ministry?
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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.
Meet the Nationalist Custodian of Ukraine’s New “Virtual Necropolis”
OPINION | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS | UKRAINE | UNITED STATES
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by Moss Robeson
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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.
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
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by Dovid Katz
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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, Estonia, Hungary, 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).
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).