LVIV, Ukraine – At first blush, the scene in a remote corner of Lviv’s Yanivskiy Cemetery on May 8 seemed almost unimaginable.
Mark Blessing, a rabbi’s assistant from Ukraine’s progressive Jewish community, stood on a small plot of damp earth, singing a prayer in Hebrew.
Surrounding him were the graves of 40 unknown German soldiers, one-time prisoners of war.
“We know these were people who didn’t come with peace, but we want to remember them with peace.”
– Taras Yavorsky, one of the organizers of Fairness and Peace.
As Blessing’s voice cut through the heavy air, still thick with moisture from the rain that pounded this picturesque city the night before, those present at this ceremony stood silent for many moments. The enormity of the moment had finally sunk in: Blessing had just spiritually recognized men who had come to this region in World War II not out of goodwill, but to conquer and kill.
“We know these were people who didn’t come with peace, but we want to remember them with peace,” said Taras Yavorsky, one of the organizers of Fairness and Peace, a group that for the last five years has brought together people of all faiths to pay tribute to all the victims of World War II. “There is not one name here, no title. This is the most neglected (gravesite) in the city of Lviv. When we talk about the tool of death, genocide, the deadly annihilation of people, this all began with the greatest crime – the wiping out of humanity.”
Mark Blessing, a rabbi’s assistant from Ukraine’s progressive Jewish community, prays over the graves of unknown German soldiers, one-time prisoners of war in western Ukraine.
Those who came to the May 8 ceremony, including priests, ministers and young people, are part of a small but growing movement of individuals in western Ukraine who are beginning to rethink the region’s difficult history. They are asking questions about their countrymen’s complicity in some of its most tragic chapters, while at the same time honoring those who suffered as a consequence.
Discussions are also heating up over many other divisive issues. Those include whether elevating the status of nationalist leader Stepan Bandera (1909-1959) helps or hurts the cause of unifying Ukraine’s diverse regions. Debate is also flaring over the extent to which western Ukrainians were responsible for the demise of the region’s Jewish community during World War II, and why Ukrainians from the east do not appear ready to support the version of Ukrainian nationalism their western counterparts frequently offer.
The advent of a new pro-Russian government in Kyiv that looks ready to revise Ukrainian history in a way that is more acceptable to Moscow and often maligns western Ukraine has added urgency to this reassessment. There is a feeling that if western Ukrainians don’t soon come to terms with their own regional history, it will be too late to counter the theses forwarded by a less-friendly Kyiv.
A victim of the Josef Stalin-ordered Holodomor famine, which killed millions of Ukrainians from 1932-33, is lying on a Kharkiv street in 1933. (Courtesy of the Central Photo Archive)
One of the most widely debated topics these days is how western Ukrainians see Bandera, the man who led the more radical wing of the Organization for Ukrainian Nationalists. The movement was founded in 1929 with the goal of uniting territorially divided Ukraine and establishing it as an independent nation.
“Yushchenko, of course, acted very badly in that he accented historical memory (during his presidency) [concerning Bandera]. It is necessary to take a more serious stance toward history. ”
– Yaroslav Hrytsak, a leading historian who heads the humanities department at Lviv’s Ukrainian Catholic University.
While many western Ukrainians admire Bandera for leading a movement that was able to withstand Soviet repression for more than two decades, not everyone agrees with the decision former President Viktor Yushchenko made earlier this year to bestow Bandera with the nation’s highest honor, the Hero of Ukraine award. They are concerned that the recognition was bestowed on the eve of the Jan. 17 presidential election – a vote that Yushchenko lost by a landslide, as predicted. The award has since divided Ukraine and allowed the region’s history and its historical figures to become objects of political manipulation.
“If you want to have a discussion in Ukraine, throw in Bandera and you will have soon it,” Yaroslav Hrytsak, a leading historian who heads the humanities department at Lviv’s Ukrainian Catholic University told an audience on May 11 during a discussion about World War II.
“Yushchenko, of course, acted very badly in that he accented historical memory (during his presidency). This is not what he should have been engaged in; at least not in the first place… It is necessary to take a more serious stance toward history. ”
To that end, the Bandera award makes it only more difficult for western Ukrainians to shake the image, often perpetrated by Moscow and more recently by Ukraine’s pro-Russian Party of Regions, that everyone living in the region is a rabid nationalist or, by default, an anti-Semite.
To be sure, western Ukrainians have had a complex relationship with their Jewish neighbors. Much of the region’s centuries-old Jewish community was annihilated during the Holocaust, often with the aid of Ukrainians who cooperated with the Germans when they occupied the territory from 1941-1944. Latent anti-Semitism still exists; anti-Jewish comments can be heard from places ranging from markets to elite gyms.
At the same time, another prayer that Blessing, the rabbi assistant, participated in on May 8 is indicative of a new undercurrent here.
The ceremony at the German gravesite ended that day’s memorial service. The first stop, however, had been at Yanivskiy Prison, which during World War II had been a concentration camp for Jews. Located on the outskirts of Lviv, thousands of Jews had been incarcerated by the Nazis there. A large memorial stone outside the prison remembers the many who perished at the camp.
“It is huge,” Blessing responded, when asked how significant it was that Ukrainians had included that particular site in their prayer. Even though only a small group was present, it was a start for understanding and reconciliation, he said.
Perhaps the most critical assessment under way in western Ukraine is why the region has been unable to sell its version of Ukrainian nationalism to the eastern part of the country.
In a comment that drew widespread recognition at the Ukrainian Catholic University roundtable, historian Hrytsak said Lviv and so-called national-patriotic forces have not provided a goal around which all Ukrainians can unite. Yushchenko, he said, was successful in helping to erase myths about the Holodomor, the 1932-1933 Stalin-instigated famine that left millions dead. But that has not been enough to unite the country, he said.
“What is done in Lviv will be done in Ukraine,” Hrytsak said. “Lviv determines to a considerable extent what will be done in Ukraine.”
To that end, Lviv has failed.
“If we don’t pay attention to the crimes made before us, we are destined to commit them again,” said Myroslav Marynovych, Ukrainian Catholic University vice rector. He noted that the infighting between the former president and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko mirrored arguments that occurred among leaders of Ukraine’s nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s. Those arguments led to the eventual loss of Ukrainian sovereignty.
“This is the same paradigm,” Marynovych said. “For the future, we need to judge the steps of our ancestors.”
Natalia A. Feduschak is the Kyiv Post’s correspondent in western Ukraine. She can be reached at [email protected].
