In the 1930s anti-Semitism in the world was fashionable. Only the USSR did not suffer from it. However, the regimes of Mussolini and Horthy also did not hate their fellow Jewish citizens and even tried to protect them from Hitler’s encroachments to the extent possible.
But Western democracies, although not publicly encouraging the Nazis to repeat “Kristallnacht”, made the destruction of the Jews of the Reich by Hitler almost inevitable because they essentially blocked their emigration from Nazi Germany.
Let me remind you that initially Hitler planned the expulsion of Jews (as well as robbing them). The “final solution” (the euphemism that disguised genocide) was made only on January 20th 1942 at a conference in Wannsee. Of course, Jews have been killed before, and even locked up en masse in concentration camps. But they started to be destroyed after the decisions made in Wannsee on an industrial scale with German scrupulousness.
Initially, Hitler (by the way, fearing a negative reaction of the West to the genocide) was not even opposed to the creation of his own Jewish state by immigrants from Germany in Madagascar or anywhere else. In the early years after coming to power, the Nazis encouraged Jews to travel overseas. Some (especially individual specialists, great scientists and world-famous cultural figures) were lucky and found a new motherland. However, thousands of ordinary Jews managed to leave. However, the West quickly stopped receiving migrants, it came to the fact that steamboats with emigrants onboard that had already come to the United States were turning around. European countries simply closed their borders. And Hitler realised that the “world community” was not interested in the fate of the Jews of the Reich.
I would like to emphasize that this is not about Poland, which is inherited with anti-Semitism. Poles displaced Jews before the war, killed during the war, and finally survived already “popular” Poland after the war. Beyond the minimum quotas, the borders of such pillars of pre-war democracy as Great Britain, France, and the United States were closed to the Jews of the Reich.
During the war, attitudes started to change. The ruling circles of Western democracies realised that the Jews had nowhere to retreat and it is impossible for them to surrender. Therefore, the British even formed some ethnic Jewish units. But the war closed the borders, and it was too late for the millions of Jews remaining in Germany and the occupied territories.
The Holocaust became one piece of evidence of the criminality of the Nazi regime, and mass hecatombes in extermination camps (like Sobibor) gave the “world community” a greater impression that they were mostly not prisoners of war, but civilians, including women and children. As a result, anti-Semitism went out of fashion for a long time. Therefore, in modern times even the most outspoken Nazis try to pretend that anti-Semitism was a personal problem of Hitler, who had an unstable psyche, and has nothing to do with ideology.
The Ukrainian regime long and persistently pretended that local nationalists/radicals do not have anti-Semitism as a phenomenon. Attempts are made to forget the speech of Tyagnibok in 2004 – in which he called, following the example of his ancestors, to cleanse the Ukrainian land of “moskals, polaks, and yids” – as an unpleasant one-off excess. According to him, it can happen to anyone. Beatings of Jews near synagogues at the height of Maidan in the winter of 2014 were also quickly played down as unfortunate incidents and generally “domestic conflicts”. Then Kolomoisky invented the term “judeobanderist“, and everything calmed down. Official propaganda claimed that on one side of the barricades there was a monolithic “Ukrainian political nation”, and on the other side “moskals, separatists, Soviets, and vatniks”, presenting the conflict as the fight of “democrats” against the “restoration of the USSR”, which Russia allegedly aspires to do.
Nevertheless, Banderism was recognised as the official ideology of “European Ukraine”. And Banderists officially emphasised their blood relationship with Hitler’s Reich, writing it straight into their program documents. Just like how “cleansing” Ukrainians of Russians, Poles, and Jews was their most important priority. They started their cooperation with the Nazis with Jewish pogroms in Western Ukraine. The Communists who had not had time to evacuate themselves were killed, and the pogrom of Polish professors in Lvov was perpetrated. But it was Jews who were killed everywhere, regardless of status, political views, loyalty to the new authorities, even service in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I.
Moreover, it was not the Germans, who simply did not have enough for everything (the troops were needed at the front, the security divisions were engaged in the protection of the army rear, and the Einsatzgruppen numbered a thousand people. And there were only four of them (one in a group of army groups “center” and “north” and two in the band of army group “South”), who were especially distinguished in this field. They, of course, tried very hard, but could not embrace the vastness. The lion’s share of destroyed Soviet Jews is the work of local collaborators. In Ukraine – Ukrainian nationalists. Since Banderists eventually won the struggle for power from other OUN factions, they are directly responsible for this genocide.
When the Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, and others living in Ukraine are registered as Banderists, I can still understand it. Official propaganda explains to them that Banderists fought for the freedom of Ukraine against both the Germans and the USSR. At the same time, the vast majority of current Banderists had grandparents fighting not in the ranks of UPA, but in the ranks of the Soviet Army, so it seems that everyone is equal, and ancestors were simply “wrong”. But most Jews have ancestors lying in mass graves, where they were solicitously rammed by Banderists.
At the same time, when the Rada adopts a law on the celebration in 2020 of the birthdays of Nazis, collaborators, and participants and organisers of the mass murder of Jews (Poltawez Ostrjanyzja, Levkovich, Samchuk, Sidor, Osmak, Vyshnivsky, Kubiyovich, Galasa, Starukh, Melnik), only the head of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee Eduard Dolinsky acts with a protest. And this is not an isolated case. Dolinsky has been protesting for many years and almost always alone.
I understand why he is not supported by Kolomoisky, Korban, and Gordon. These Jews became part of the regime. They can even count on the status of “honorary Aryan”. But in the country there are thousands, tens of thousands, of quite ordinary, competent, well-educated Jews who nevertheless stand on the side of the murderers of their ancestors. I’m not talking about a very influential rabbinate.
In the end, I came to the conclusion that the behaviour of Ukrainian Jews is dictated by the same hopelessness as that of all remaining Ukrainian citizens. After all, they voted for Zelensky, hoping for God knows what. And now they say that they voted not for him, but against Poroshenko (although in order to vote “against” it was possible to not come to the election at all, which is much more effective than choosing the same as Poroshenko, only smaller and one and a half times younger). These same optimists say that Zelensky wants to do things, but cannot, because “Nazis impede him”. Well, the very ones who are “not in Ukraine” and “where did you see them?”. And so “Nazis impeded” Poroshenko too, and he himself, maybe, also wanted “the best for everyone”. That’s how Zelensky behaves.
And Zelensky is still not Kolomoisky. He is the same “good boy” from an intelligent Jewish family who, despite his very good income, lived the same life as most citizens of Ukraine until 2019 (slightly better quality than most). But his standard of living and his interests were dramatically different from those of Ukrainian oligarchs, who successfully cooperate with the Nazis. Unlike Kolomoisky, Zelensky is a stranger to these Nazis.
So, we see that the President-Jew (Zelensky) – elected by the overwhelming majority of citizens of Ukraine, behind who his master-Jew (Kolomoisky) stands – is wildly afraid of Ukrainian Nazi-Banderists, the same ones who seem to be not present and to who, according to Ukrainian experts, 1.5% of voters gave their vote. And a large proportion of voters justify him – they understand his fear. What’s the matter?
The fact is that Ukrainian Nazis came to power, like Hitler, with the full blessing of the West. And they still enjoy its support (albeit reduced). But being in Ukraine it is very difficult to assess the real reduction of this support and to understand that Banderist statehood is doomed.
In addition, the victims of the liquidation of ghettos or the “evacuation” of concentration camps did not care whether it was March 1945 or already April, or whether liberators were thousands of kilometers away or only a few dozen. They were at the mercy of their executioners and perished even on the eve of the fall of the Reich.
I think that even the Ukrainian Jews who are most loyal to the Kiev regime have no illusions – Banderists will kill up to the last moment. At the last moment they will kill those who will come under their hand. And it will be those who didn’t have time (or for some reason did not want) to leave the country, the “vatniks” who didn’t hide themselves, and the Jews. The former will be few, and the latter will be accused of being oligarchs (although not all oligarchs are Jews, but Jews will be responsible for everything), it will be Prime Minister Groisman, and President Zelensky, and perhaps, Poroshenko too.
So, the West brought Hitler to power and allowed him to kill Jews only to fight against the USSR. The West brought Banderists to power in Ukraine to fight Russia. Jews are not yet being killed, because in modern times anti-Semitism is not trendy, but the less the attention of the “international community” to Ukraine, the more the Banderists are tempted not to glance back at the rules of the “civilised world”, but to succumb to their centuries-old instincts. Especially since the West will usually blame Russia for Banderist terror.
Knowing all this, the average Ukrainian Jew seeks to keep the West’s attention on Ukraine’s processes. Since the West is interested in Maidan, it is necessary to support Maidan, even if the Maidan is a Banderist one. Because as long as the West exercises control over the Banderist government, it will be bad, but there still won’t be genocide, but once the Banderist government is left alone with the people of Ukraine, nothing will hold back its cave instincts.
And so Jewish emigration from independent Ukraine in the 1990s exceeded the highest figures of the USSR era. Everyone who could and wanted to left: some to Israel, some to the West, some to Russia. And those who remained hoping for the best (like how sometimes Jewish families remained in the cities captured by Hitler’s Nazis, hoping that “the Germans are cultured people” and “in 1918 they were here and brought order”) will have to play by Banderist rules. To survive like the rest of Ukraine’s citizens survive. Since the West will not intercede, like how it didn’t intercede for the Jews of the Reich.
Hence the paradox when a Jewish president, elected by three quarters of the votes of those who came to the election and still has an approval rating exceeding 50%, is forced to fawn in front of cave anti-Semites (who his grandfather fought against), bow to them, and swear loyalty to the ideas of Bandera/Shukhevych. He survives. He knows that the Nazis are few, but they are a force, and the rest, who are numerous, divided, and fooled want peace, but are ready to “fight Russia” and hate “vatniks” and “separatists”. He also knows that waking up not even sleeping, but just a slightly dormant instinct of thousand-year-old Ukrainian anti-Semitism costs nothing, and then the scenes of the Jewish pogrom from “Taras Bulba” will seem like a children’s game on the lawn.
The remnants of Ukrainian Jewry resigned themselves to their fate. They fell in love with the terrorists who captured them (together with the country) (“Stockholm syndrome”). They don’t even want to be liberated from Banderism anymore. After all, liberation will break the fragile understanding established between them and the terrorists. The terrorists will start to get nervous and can kill (if not all, then many) before liberation comes.
In this regard, the Jewish community of Ukraine doesn’t differ in anything from other citizens. It is simply that the conformism of the others is not so striking, because Babi Yar does not lie between them and Banderists. And Sholem Aleichem, whose monument was painted with a swastika, is not their national writer. And when changing the red flag of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic to the yellow-blue of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, the Ukrainian “only” changes their side in the civil war, which still hasn’t ended, having started a hundred years ago, while the Jew starts to glorify the murderers of their ancestors, who wanted to remove their people at the root.
But in fact, all remaining citizens of Ukraine, Jews, Russians, Hungarians, Romanians, and even those who, like Avakov and Saakashvili, consider themselves to be Ukrainians, are the hostages of the Banderist terrorists who seized the country. There are always fewer terrorists than hostages. Hostages always have a chance, by organising themselves, to neutralise terrorists with minimal losses. But, firstly, who will let them organise themselves (for this they would kill and squeeze out potential organisers from the country so that there would be no one to organise resistance), and secondly, no one wants to be among those “minimal” losses.
And it’s in the same way that in the concentration camps thousands of prisoners obediently went for slaughter under the supervision of a few guards. Ukraine is now one large concentration camp. Anyone who is not an executioner is a potential future victim. Well, and it is everyone who decides by themselves whether they want to be executioners or executioners’ helpers.
Rostislav Ishchenko
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