It condemns the Oct. 28 parliamentary election success of the nationalist Svoboda Party, whose leader Oleh Tiahnybok has made anti-Semitic remarks in the past. He now commands 37 out of 450 seats in the Verkhovna Rada.
“Svoboda’s ideological roots, however, are hardly out of sync with the country’s mainstream,” the editorial continued. “Ukraine, unfortunately, hadn’t cleansed its citizenry of endemic anti-Semitism (it) is vulgar and in-your-face – as it was before the Soviets temporarily held the genie in the bottle.”
Endemic anti-Semitism is not part of the country’s mainstream ideology today, if it ever was, at least among most Ukrainians. And the Soviets didn’t keep the genie in the bottle; rather, Josef Stalin fueled hatred and the Soviets downplayed atrocities against Jews during World War II.
And it’s not just our opinion.
Hannah Rosenthal, a U.S. State Department special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union, said only last year: “Ukraine’s performance has also improved over the past five years. The number of anti-Semitic acts of vandalism has decreased by more than half in 2010 … we have witnessed a sharp decline in the publication of anti-Semitic articles, proving that we can succeed if we work together.”
Still, anti-Semitism persists in isolated incidents of violence and more commonly with hatred and discrimination. It persists in the insensitivity of government officials and regular citizens. But Jewish culture and religion have been experiencing revivals. Some of the nation’s wealthiest, most powerful and successful citizens are Jewish.
A much more insightful understanding of Jewish history in Ukraine from ex-Kyiv Post staff writer Natalia A. Feduschak’s five-part series last year on “Ukraine’s Vanquished Jews” https://archive.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/ukraines-vanquished-jews-from-world-war-ii-107381.html.
The part of the Holocaust that took place in Ukraine came under Nazi Germany’s occupation. Some Ukrainians took part in the extermination of Jews. Others risked their lives saving them. Ukraine was the main battleground during World War II. No nation suffered a greater loss of life. Ukrainians fought on both sides. Some nationalists fought against both sides.
This bloodletting came only a decade after the 1932-33 Holodomor, Stalin’s policy of starving to death millions of Ukrainians to kill nationalism. Ukraine was the biggest part of what Yale historian Timothy Snyder called the bloodlands, an area that bore the brunt of Hitler and Stalin’s unspeakable savagery.
Ukraine has never done a good job confronting its past crimes, let alone recording its history. But Jews are not alone in this slight. Victims of atrocities in this nation rarely get their due.
