However, Vlodymir Groysman, the last Ukrainian prime minister, was an openly observant Jew.
During the German occupation in World War II, Ukrainians overwhelmingly looked on Jews as worthless foreigners and/or hated communists. Based on genealogy-related research and discussions, it appears that not a single Jew, of the several thousand in the town my mother’s family came from, was sheltered by a Christian family.
But, while Ukrainian antisemitism isn’t zero today, there has been an enormous change. It would be completely wrong to pin sins of a generation that is gone on today’s Ukrainians.
From what I read, Russians are in the Oblast in which so many of my extended family lived and were, in 1941, shot. And those Russian soldiers are treating small town people, if possible, worse than those in cities. There is not the slightest crack in my view that this invasion is wholly undeserved.
The Nazis were anti a LOT more people than just Jews - they exterminated the handicapped, were working on the Jews and Roma, and next on the list were Slavs and I’m not sure who after them but I expect the list was longer.
I would also argue that the Russians are currently engaged in ethnic cleansing in Ukraine and ARE intent on destroying that nationality, culture, and people based on what they’re actually doing in Ukraine.
It’s my personal opinion, but I think there are a certain percentage of Israelis that like to think they’re more unique than anyone else and no one’s suffering compares to theirs. Suffering shouldn’t be a pissing contest. Analogies are valid even if comparisons aren’t perfect.
Also, this:
It has been my experience as someone ethnically Jewish, even here in the relatively tolerant US, that anti-Semitics and neo-Nazis do not give a flying fuck if a person is “observant” or “just” a descendant of Jews and now secular or a member of a different religion or an outright atheist. We’re all vermin Jews and thus not worthy of life.
With a small exception for the Evangelical Christians who still despise us but have reserved a role for us as cannon fodder in their fantasies of Armageddon, to take place in a land far away from the US.
Yes, some Ukrainians were Nazi collaborators. Others engaged in pogroms before and after WWII. Pretty much none of those people are still alive and those that are, are too old to be fighting. It’s an excuse, like a man who beats his wife nearly to death because she burned dinner a year ago, and just like that excuse it may or may not be true and even if there is some truth to it, it in no way justifies the crime committed.
It would require major amnesia on the part of Poland as well, given that they still maintain the Auschwitz camps as a Holocaust memorial that receives over 2 million visitors each year.
Sure, but it’s a well established fact, as well, that the Azov regiment has… let’s say a disproportionately high neo-Nazi and far right ultranationalist wing, as compared to the rest of the population? Facebook actually had to change its moderation policies to allow them to be portrayed in a positive light.
Neo-Nazi imagery tends to keep showing up in images that have been coming out about the Ukrainian armed forces on social media.
(They also reportedly coated their bullets in pig fat to prepare for fighting Chechen troops, just like American right-wing sickos like to crow about.)
So I mean, again, it isn’t that when Putin tries to make these claims he’s just absolutely fabricating the existence of a scary Nazi contingent. It’s just that the presence or not-presence of Nazis in the Ukraine armed forces has nothing to do with what he’s doing, and wouldn’t justify it even if it did.
Nothing about that article is surprising to me. I thought it was well known historical fact that anti-semitism was pervasive throughout Europe and indeed the Americas as well at that time. While the Holocaust in sum was more than just another pogrom against the Jews, in some areas it really did present itself as… just *another pogrom against the Jews. It’s not surprising to me in the least that the Nazis were able to tap into that undercurrent of pervasive hate in the territories they occupied. They probably did the same in occupied parts of Russia. They would have done the same had they made it to the US. That’s half the premise of the alt-history series The Man in the High Castle.
So… no doubt it’s true. And a little surprised it’s a surprise to anyone that it is.
*ETA: For instance, there was a series of pogroms in what was then still called Kiev in 1919.
If anyone has any doubts about Ukrainian atrocities during the Holocaust, I suggest you watch Einsatzgruppen, The Nazi Death Squads on Netflix. Ukraine was probably Hitler’s most enthusiastic puppet government and the SS was able to farm out most of the executions of Jews to the locals. That past should never be forgotten, but neither should it be used as fodder for stirring up hatred against people who weren’t even alive at the time.
So I think there’s been a sidetrack here. No one involved is denying the horrors of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, or that some of the Ukrainian people were complicit in those horrors. Least of all Zelenskyy who had many family members murdered during that occupation.
But as a historian of the Holocaust in Ukraine, I know how problematic this comparison is. Zelensky, who played a history teacher on TV, should know better, too.
This is what I disagree with. Zelenskyy is not saying the Russian occupation of Ukraine is identical to the Nazi occupation, Putin is as guilty as Hitler, and the Russian troops are as guilty as the SS Einzatzgruppen (I’ve not heard ever single speech he’s made on the matter, but I’m pretty confident saying this).
He’s just drawing a parallel between the unjustified brutal invasion of Ukraine by a neighboring country with a militaristic dictator that happened in 1941 with the unjustified brutal invasion of Ukraine by neighboring country with a militaristic dictator that happened in 2022. This is not that problematic IMO. The circumstances of that invasion don’t need to identical for the parallels to be valid, its an invasion FFS, not a mask ordinance!
This reminds me that in the Soviet film Come and See, depicting the Nazi occupation of Belarus and regarded as one of the greatest anti-war films ever, the stooge-like villains accompanying the Germans are supposed to be… Ukrainians.
Not offered as truth of the proposition, but only to note that perceptions of Ukrainians participating in Nazi atrocities against the rest of the USSR in general and Jews might be said to border on a “trope.”
So, again, I’m a bit surprised that it isn’t generally accepted that of course some Ukrainians would have joined Nazis in their atrocities during WWII. I dare say the same must be true of every occupied territory (that some of the occupied population would have been all too happy to join the occupiers in settling old scores where their prejudices aligned).
In the United States, in New York State, somewhere around the 1990’s:
I was waiting for my clothes to dry at a laundromat, and got into conversation with another woman who was doing the same. I don’t remember why I wound up mentioning during the conversation that I’m Jewish* – she might have asked me what church I go to or something of the sort – ; but what I do remember is her exclaiming “I’ve never seen a Jew!” and standing up and walking all around me to stare at me from different angles.
I was too flabberghasted to ask her if she was looking for the horns. I’m pretty sure I said something like ‘how on earth could you tell, we don’t look any different from anybody else!’; which appeared to make no impression at all.
– yeah. There are Nazis, antisemites, and just plain ignorant fools all over the place. Some of them have at some points held some political power in Ukraine, and in Russia, and in a lot of other places. Ukraine doesn’t currently have a Nazi government and appears to have been moving distinctly in the other direction; and in any case that’s not why Putin’s invading the place.
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*my heritage is, anyway; and sometimes I don’t want to get into a long discussion about ‘my heritage is Jewish and my personal belief is probably some sort of Pagan but I’ve never run into any group that really matches’.
I had a twenty-something Ukrainian co-worker a few years ago who told me that some gypsies (not sure if she was referring to the Roma people or another group) had the power to hypnotize you and take your money. Kind of left me speechless.
I’ve gotten ‘what are you?’ and 'where are you from? (in the tone of voice that means they’re not asking what town). And ‘are you Native American’, ‘are you Indian’, ‘are you Hispanic’, ‘are you Italian’, ‘are you Arabic’, and once or twice in late summer with a good tan on ‘are you Black’. And I’m pretty sure some others which I forget. But, interestingly, almost never ‘are you Jewish’. The name I’ve been going by since my late twenties is a clear indicator to anyone who recognizes it, but most people around here don’t. (And those who do recognize the name don’t need to ask.)
The one time I was in Italy people did seem to assume I was Italian until I opened my mouth. Which was usually to say 'Non capisco".
In regard to the bizarre questions asked of Jewish folks: I’m totally amazed at how stupid people can be, but I really shouldn’t be.
Since I look like a loaf of walking Wonder Bread, the only bizarre question of that type I’ve ever been asked is “Are you a skinhead?” by a complete stranger as I walked through a 7-11 parking lot. Since I had hair that wass down to the middle of my back, the only reason I can fathom being asked this was due to my wearing a leather jacket that I had painted. I also can’t imagine what conversation this person was intending to start, because I grabbed a handful of my hair, said “Nope, got hair!” and walked on.
I’ve gotten “What are you?” “You’re not an American,” “I don’t know what you are, but keep driving” (which is why I no longer set foot in Idaho), and “Can I see your horns?”
For those who are perplexed by the horns thing, when Jerome translated the bible into Latin (the Vulgate), he mistranslated, of Moses, “His face shone” as “His face had horns.” Both have the same consonantal root, QRN, with different vowel markings.
