A charge of antisemitism in contemporary Ukraine leveled by Josh Cohen, is belied by the backdrop posted on Reuters in connection with his commentary. President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine came to power in May 2014, defeating rather handily some twenty opponents in a primary scheduled for a runoff except that Mr. Poroshenko managed to garner more than 50% in the first round, rendering round two unnecessary. Mr. Poroshenko is a Ukrainian Jew, albeit one who accepted Christianity as a practicing religion. Mr. Poroshenko is hardly an aberration in Ukrainian politics. The Prime minister of Ukraine is Volodymyr Groysman, a Ukrainian Jew as well and a practicing one. There are only several hundred thousand Jews in Ukraine, a country of some 45million. Neither Mr. Poroshenko's nor Mr. Groysman's background interfered with their rise to political prominence.
If Cohen purports to make out a case for current antisemitism in Ukraine, he fails miserably. Besides the President and the Prime minister, there is an abundance of Ukrainian Jews in power in Ukraine, certainly overwhelmingly disproportionate to the Jewish population. A majority of eligible Ukrainian citizens vote in elections, Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims as well as Ukrainian Ukrainians, Russian Ukrainians, Polish Ukrainians, Jewish Ukrainians etc. Religion or ethnicity are non-issues.
Cohen's apparent current beef is with the renaming of a street in Kyiv from Vatutin to Shukhevych. Vatutin was a Soviet general who fought in World War II to defend the USSR and keep Ukraine enslaved within its confines. Roman Shukhevych (nom de guerre Taras Chuprynka) was a leading Ukrainian revolutionary and later commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) who fought and died in battle for a free and independent Ukraine. Whose name should be on the streets of independent democratic Ukraine's capital? The sparse and elderly crowd that did demonstrate for the retention of the Vatutin name were not opposing Shukhevych, but defending a Soviet relic. That mindset still exists in post Soviet society.
Labeling Shukhevych a Nazi collaborator and anti-Semite is frankly laughable if it were not scurrilous. Shukhevych first fought the Nazis and their Hungarian allies in the early period of 1939 when the Soviets themselves were the most prominent Nazi collaborators. Shukhevych later became the commander in chief of the UPA, a force created specifically to fight the Nazis in the Volyn region. Later the UPA fought the Soviets as well a the Polish National Army and Polish, Soviet and other partisans. The Nazi auxiliary police in Volyn in 1943-44 was not Ukrainian but Polish by ethnicity. The UPA fought them. Since the Polish police and Polish partisans were aided and abetted by Polish colonizers, the UPA often fought them as well. Jews,in an effort to save themselves, fought on all sides including the UPA.
Shukhevych's singular alliance with the Germans came in preparation for the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. He trained and then commanded a Ukrainian ethnic legion intent on reaching the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv first to free Ukrainian prisoners from Soviet prisons and lay the groundworkfor a Ukrainian administration. Among the prisoners “freed” was Shukhevych's own brother who had been brutalized and murdered by the fleeing Soviets. The Soviets established a special commission in 1945 to investigate war crimes by the Nazis and their collaborators in Western Ukraine. There was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Ukrainian legion commanded by Shukhevych. Likewise no charges were made against the legion or Shukhevych at Nuremberg.
As to antisemitism Shukhevych's wife Natalia hid a Jewish girl Irene Reichenberg from the Nazis from September 1942 until February 1943. Romanprocured forged documents for the girl with a Ukrainian name Iryna Ryzhko. When Nataliawas arrested by the Soviets, Roman transferred Iryna to a monastery. The girl survived the war and lived in Ukraine until her death in 2007.
Cohen unfortunately has little knowledge of Ukrainian history and even less understanding of the intricacies of World War II. But he does understand that there is a market for Russian propaganda and an implementation of the old Roman adage “divide et impera”. A Ukrainian-Jewish conflict today serves only one country – Russia. Cohen is being disingenuous when he bemoans the use of Ukrainian antisemitism as a weapon by “Russia Today”, a government sponsored institution created to disseminate propaganda and convince the rest of the world that there is a free press in Russia. Whatever Cohen's aims, they are not to foster better Ukrainian-Jewish relations.
President Poroshenko is doing quite well in this regard. Last year Ukraine served as a venue for the commemoration of one of the worst Jewish tragedies in history – the killing in one location of some 30,000 Jews at Babyn Yar by the Nazis (There are some 100,000 interred at Babyn Yar, 70,000 non-Jews). President Poroshenko and the Ukrainian people were an integral part of that commemoration. The chief rabbi of Ukraine to whom Cohen refers has told me in private conversation that contemporary Ukraine is a welcome opportunity for Jews worldwide and that's why Jews even from Israel are going to Ukraine. Once for Purim he pit on a Cossack costume which I supplied.
Jewish-Ukrainian reconciliation is not a welcome specter for Russia.If one were to seek the opinion of the average Ukrainian or average Jew in Ukraine, one would learn that age-old differences or even animosities, historically often being on different sides of the barricade, is largely a thing of the past. Are there anti-Semites and Ukrainophobes in Ukraine? Of course. And not only in Ukraine, but elsewhere as well.As a Ukrainian-American I feel much disdain for those who insist on perpetuating ethnic conflicts where they do not exist, intentionally or misguidedly playing the Russian hand. Many of them are Jews, in particular those employed for that purpose, but my disdain for them does not make me an anti-Semite. The disdain is well earned.
