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To the Organizers of the Symposium “The Holocaust in Ukraine. New Perspectives on the Evils of the 20th Century,” Paris, March 9-11, 2017: We are concerned about the fact that Volodymyr Viatrovych, Director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, will be speaking at the symposium “The Holocaust in Ukraine. New Perspectives on the Evils of the 20th Century” on March 9-11, 2017. It is well documented that his publications do not correspond to international academic standards and serve to support a nationalist agenda. He was also instrumental in the drafting of laws which have been widely criticized in the international academic community for their clear potential to stifle open debate about the history of Ukrainian nationalism, especially during World War Two. We understand the need for controversial and free discussion, but we also think that inviting Volodymyr Viatrovych to speak on this topic at your conference in effect risks normalizing and legitimizing politicized attempts to downplay the antisemitic ideas and actions of World War Two Ukrainian nationalists.
The article concerns debate about the memory of the Holocaust in Ukraine. It covers the period 2004–2008. Keywords: Ukraine; Holocaust; memory
Scholars of Ukrainian history do not have the option of doing nothing, but I am not sure if they know where they should go. Reading some of the reviews of the Bandera study and also observing reactions to other publications about the 'unpatriotic' aspects of Ukrainian history, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, scholars of Ukrainian history realize that all aspects of Ukrainian history including the Holocaust and fascism should be explored and the methods of examining the past standardized and professionalized. On the other hand, they invent concepts like 'integral nationalism' or 'ustashism' that may be important to write a specific version of Ukrainian history but are neither compatible with European history nor help us to understand the past in transnational context. Thus, I think that the process of rethinking the Ukrainian history of the Second World War and the coming to terms with the Holocaust and other forms of mass violence conducted by Ukrainian nationalists and ordinary Ukrainians will be difficult in Ukraine, if it will happen at all. Nevertheless, there are some good examples of how it can work including Poland, where in 2001 Jan Tomasz Gross’s study of the events in Jedwabne in the summer of 1941 and later the publications of scholars from the Center for Holocaust Research (Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów, CBZZ) brought forward a discourse on the Polish perpetrators and the Holocaust in general and made Poles more aware of the ‘unpatriotic’ elements of their history. The CBZZ can serve as an example for scholars of Ukrainian history who are interested in a critical and comprehensive investigation of the murder of the Jews and the Second World War because this institution developed ground-breaking methods and has published several important studies with limited financial resources. Unlike Yuri Radchenko, they did not try to prove that they know everything better than ‘foreign scholars’ but concentrated on more basic and pragmatic activities such as the exploration of the Holocaust. Doing so, they made the history of the Second World War in Poland more transparent, less political, and in the end compatible with European and transnational history. I hope that something similar will happen in Ukraine.
The war in Europe impacted Holocaust education and research in Ukraine related to the fact that survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust were forced to save their lives by fleeing the combat zones, and some of them died in suffering, like Wanda Obiedkova, a survivor of the Holocaust, who lost her life in April 2022, during the siege of Mariupol. War revitalized their traumatic memories of WWII, making interaction with them more challenging and ethically problematic. At the same time, Russian aggression destroys and harms not only the living memory of the Holocaust in Ukraine but also places of memory, like Babyn Yar in Kyiv, Drobytskyj Yar in Kharkiv, Jewish cemeteries, and synagogues. Apart from that, Holocaust educators witnessed the weaponization of the history of WWII and the Holocaust by Putin’s regime to justify its brutal aggression against Ukraine. Kremlin top politicians and propagandists make inadequate parallels between the stance of Jews during the Holocaust and Russian people during Russia’s war in Ukraine, trying to create the narrative of victimhood. At the same time, the Ukrainian authorities are using the history and memory of WWII for national mobilization in times of existential threat.
Introduction Viewed in historical perspective the question of Ukrainian-Jewish relations is an extremely important one, not only as regards the Ukrainian and Jewish peoples, but also in the light of world peace and international well-being. First of all, a substantial part of Europe's Jewish population lived in Ukraine for several centuries. There they shared the lot of the Ukrainian people in their misery and the ongoing struggle for freedom and national emancipation. Relations between Jews and Ukrainians were clouded at times by mutual accusations that followed upon bitter conflicts affecting both peoples adversely. During both World War I and World War II the interrelations of Ukrainians and Jews reached the highest point of tension. It was at these times that the Ukrainians were making supreme efforts to attain freedom and national independence. They had to wage a long drawn out and desperate struggle, at times against two or even three aggressive neighbors who had designs on the natural resources of Ukraine. With that in view, these neighbors opposed the aspirations of the Ukrainian people to freedom and national statehood. As one of the largest and most active minorities in Ukraine, the Jews often found themselves between hammer and anvil. They endeavored to maintain ronunlikely neutrality, or else found themselves associated with forces that the Ukrainians came to oppose as they reached for independence. This situation, unhappily for both groups, occasioned tension and recriminations. Jews charged that Ukrainians were anti-Semitic, while Ukrainians maintained that the Jews en masse were supporting Russian policies and were providing personnel for the Russian communist police apparatus in Ukraine. Fortunately for both peoples, these charges are greatly exaggerated. While anti-Semitic excesses occurred in Ukraine during the revolution, and especially during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine in 1941-44, these oannot be charged to the Ukrainian people as such All the historical evidence proves the opposite. The Ukrainian community rejected the anti-Semitic pogroms as inconsistent with the Ukrainian democratic traditions and way of life. During the short-lived Ukrainian independent state (1918 1920)) the Jews were granted national-personal autonomy in Ukraine. Jewish ministers were appointed to the Ukrainian government. The Hebrew language was on the currency of the Ukrainian government. In the time of Hitler's barbarous rule in Ukraine) hundreds of Ukrainians were executed by the Gestapo for giving help and shelter to persecuted and hunted Jews. The late Metropolitan Andrew Sheptytsky of the Ukrainian Catholic Church issued two notable pastoral letters in defense of Jews. Subsequently Himmler is said to have ordered his arrest. It was only the Nazi debacle at Stalingrad that dissuaded the Nazi police from arresting Metropolitan Sheptytsky. On the other hand) while some Jews occupied prominent positions in the NKVD and MVD before and during World War II and served in Ukraine in the generally oppressive apparatus of Oommunist Russia) the rank and file of Jews in Ukraine suffered just as much from Moscow)s totalitarian rule as did the Ukrainians. Today the situation has changed to an appreciable degree. The Jews have succeeded in establishing their own state of Israel)' there thousands of Jews) including a great number from Ukraine) have found a new life in freedom. But the Ukrainians are still enslaved and persecuted. And some 900POO or 1POOPOO Jews still in Ukraine experience with them the ruthless oppression and persecution directed by the Kremlin. Moscow has always played the classic game of divide et impera (divide and rule). It has been using anti-Semitism as a powerful weapon against Jews and Christians alike. The notable example was the publication in 1963 in Kiev of Judaism without Embellishment, by Prof. Trofim K. Kichko, under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. This understandably created worldwide indignation and protests. Some Jewish leaders unthinkingly ascribed the publication of the book to "Ukrainiasi anti-Semitism/) failing to discern that the true culprit was the Soviet government itself. Today Prof. Kiohkds book has been withdrawn from circulation and he himself is said to have been assigned some obscure post in the Soviet admistration. But damage to the Ukrainian name was done with tening effect. Such was the intention of Moscow in ordering the publication of Prof. Kichko's book in the first place. The approach to a positive solution of the Ukrainian-Jewish problem should not be obscured by either hatred or emotion. The fact is that the future of Ukrainian-Jewish relations very much depends upon the leaders of these two peoples on this side of the Iron Curtain. They should exercise judicious wisdom in appraising and analyzing the relations which have bound the two peoples for centuries. With such an aim in mind) this Symposium is being published by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America. It includes a number of Jewish writers: Leo Heiman and Dr. M. Broida of Israel)' Dr. Judd Teller and Eugene Sanjour of the United States. There also are articles by outstanding Ukrainian American writers: Dr. Matthew Btachiso, Prof. Roman Smal-Stocki, Dr. Lew Shankowsky, Dr. Lev E. Dobriansky and Walter Dushnuck, There are historical testimonies of several Ukrainian and Jewish witnesses about the assistance given to Jews by Ukrainians during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine in 1941-44. There are included official statements and pronouncements of the Ukrainian government regarding Jewish autonomy and the pogroms in Ukraine, statements of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America and the Ukrainian Canadian Committee denouncing the anti-Semitic publication in Kiev, and other important statements. It is sincerely hoped that this Symposium will provide important source material for those interested in the plight of Jews in the Soviet communist empire, and also for those who study the history of the Ukrainian people and their aspiration to freedom and independence. THE EDITORS
Himka, John-Paul. 4. “Ukrainian Memories of the Holocaust: The Destruction of Jews as Reflected in Memoirs Collected in 1947.” Canadian Slavonic Papers 54, no. 3-4 (September-December 2012): 427-42.
In 1947 the Oseredok Ukrainian Cultural and Education Centre in Winnipeg held a memoir contest. Sixty-four memoirs were submitted, and most of them are still preserved in Oseredok’s archives. I examined all extant submissions in order to determine what they had to say about the Holocaust. Altogether twenty-five memoirs concerned World War II, and of these fourteen made at least some mention of the Holocaust. This body of memoirs is the earliest collection of Ukrainian memoirs of World War II that I am aware of, the closest in time to the events of the Holocaust. Already then, however, Ukrainians had become quite defensive about their behavior towards the Jews; this perhaps explains why close to half the memoirs about the war omitted the fate of the Jews altogether and why the memoirs that do mention the Holocaust say almost nothing about Ukrainian involvement. The memoirists did, however, reproduce the image of Jews as agents of communism, particularly active in the organs of repression. The majority of the 1947 memoirs none the less indicated horror at and disapproval of the murder of the Jews by the Germans. Perhaps characteristically, the account expressing the strongest such feelings was written by an older man from outside Western Ukraine. Conversely, the most outright expression of lack of sympathy with the Jews came from a man twelve years younger and from Galicia. Although the latter felt pity for some individual Jews he knew and gave them alms, he expressly stated that he had no sympathy with them as a group, as “a nation that had done so much evil to my nation.” Perhaps this is a case that corresponds to the phenomenon noted by Jan Gross in Fear, that individuals hate whom they have injured: this memoirist served in the civil administration.
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