WHAT HAPPENED TO UKRAINE'S JEWISH PEOPLE?

KIEV, Ukraine — Last September, I stood at the 75th-anniversary commemorations at Babi Yar — a mass grave where more than 33,000 Jews from Kiev were massacred in two days during the Holocaust — listening to President Petro Poroshenko deliver a stirring speech about why such atrocities must never be repeated. As the director for the past 10 years of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, one of the country's most influential Jewish organizations, I was pleased to hear this.

 

But my joy was tempered by something I'd seen at Babi Yar earlier in the day: an exhibit honoring Ivan Rohach. Rohach was the editor of a radical nationalist newspaper that in 1941, the same year as the massacre at Babi Yar, described Jews as the "greatest enemy of the people." He was also a leading activist with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, whose members were actively involved in the Holocaust in Ukraine. The exhibit omitted all of this.

 

The O.U.N. and its military wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or U.P.A., are now being glorified as freedom fighters. What is not mentioned is the O.U.N.'s xenophobic, anti-Semitic ideology, which described Jews as a "predominantly hostile body within our national organism," or that the O.U.N.-U.P.A. militia collaborated in the Holocaust and also massacred between 70,000 and 100,000 Polish civilians in order to create an ethnically pure Ukraine.

 

Despite these atrocities, many Ukrainians, especially in western Ukraine, view the O.U.N.-U.P.A. as heroes because they fought a guerrilla war against the Soviets during the 1950s, a struggle that some believe has echoes in the fight against Russia today.

 

Government-sponsored institutions are behind the whitewashing. Led by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, the rewriting of the country's World War IIhistory is being done to glorify the O.U.N.-U.P.A. while denying the group's crimes. In 2015, Ukraine adopted a law that classifies the O.U.N.-U.P.A. as "fighters for Ukrainian statehood" and that says those who "publicly exhibit a disrespectful attitude" toward these groups will be prosecuted.

Since 2015, numerous streets have been renamed after O.U.N.-U.P.A. leaders and members. The memory institute is currently drafting a law to retroactively exonerate individual members of the O.U.N.-U.P.A. who had been convicted of murdering Jews and Poles by Soviets after the war.

This is not just a fight over history. Virulent right-wing nationalist groups have found new prominence in Ukrainian politics in recent years. Although extremist political parties make up only a small minority of Parliament, far-right groups have violently clashed with the government on a number of occasions. Many Jews fear that the government will never repudiate the cult of the O.U.N.-U.P.A. for fear of provoking a far-right backlash.

 

As the historical revisionism has ramped up, so has the desecration of Ukraine's Holocaust sites and memorials. Babi Yar's commemorative memorial was vandalized nine times in 2015 and 2016, with everything from painted swastikas to an attempt on Rosh Hashana to burn down a menorah at the site. More recently, a Holocaust memorial in the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil was painted with a swastika and SS runes.

 

To the great distress of Ukraine's Jewish community, these cases remain unsolved. In fact, law enforcement here often denies that a problem exists. On Jan. 1, a torch-lit march through central Kiev in honor of the O.U.N. leader Stepan Bandera rang out with cries of "Jews out." Seven hundred police officers were mobilized to provide security to the march, and yet the next day when journalists asked the police to comment on the chants, officers denied hearing anything anti-Semitic.

 

The climate of anti-Semitism can be found elsewhere, too. Jewish cemeteries and synagogues have been vandalized. Nadia Savchenko, a member of Parliament who became a national hero when she was a pilot captured by Russia, recently appeared on television and delivered an anti-Semitic screed. "I have nothing against Jews," she said. "I do not like 'kikes.' " She added: "Jews possess 80 percent of the power when they only account for 2 percent of the population."

 

During my more than 20 years as a Ukrainian Jewish activist, I have proudly witnessed our Jewish community revive itself after 70 years of Soviet persecution. Even though many Jews have emigrated to Israel and the West, we remain a vibrant community of approximately 300,000. We love and support our country, and many Jews participated in the Euromaidan revolution.

 

The majority of Ukrainian Jews share the desire to build a modern, democratic state, free from the endemic corruption we have lived with for the past 25 years. We support Ukraine's choice to integrate with the West — which is why the Kremlin's attempt to turn Ukraine's Jews against Kiev during Moscow's takeover of Crimea failed — and we have no more desire to live under Russian domination than other citizens.

 

Ukrainian Jews are not the only ones concerned about this anti-Semitism. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the Simon Wiesenthal Center and 70 leading scholars have condemned the 2015 memory law.

 

In his speech during commemorations last year at Babi Yar, President Reuven Rivlin of Israel told the Ukrainian Parliament that "many collaborators to the crimes were Ukrainians. And among them, the fighters of the O.U.N. — who mocked the Jews, killed them and in many cases handed them over to the Germans — particularly distinguished themselves." Poland, too, has been rankled by the glorification of the O.U.N. In February, the leader of Poland's ruling party reportedly told President Poroshenko that Ukraine "won't make it to Europe with Bandera."

 

Sadly, the movement to rehabilitate the O.U.N. continues. This raises the concern that some Ukrainian politicians may be willing to sacrifice our country's relations with the United States, Poland and Israel - not to mention the safety of Jewish citizens here - in exchange for "peaceful coexistence" with the far right.

 

Over the past three years, the United States and Europe have provided Ukraine invaluable support in its quest for independence. Part of that support was intended to help ensure that Kiev does not stray from the goal of becoming a Western nation. For example, newspapers, including this one, and politicians, like former Vice President Joe Biden, have not been shy about condemning corruption. Western leaders' must also stress that the glorification of organizations like O.U.N.-U.P.A. remains incompatible with Western values. We need the United States and the world's help — for the memory of the slaughtered Jews and for Ukraine's future.

 

Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee.

 

 The New York Times