Babyn Yar and Ukrainian “guilt” complex

A couple of hours later, the President of Israel spoke at a special Verkhovna Rada sitting to mark the anniversary of the first Babyn Yar executions. We quote him exactly as saying: “About 1.5 million Jews were killed on the territory of present-day Ukraine during World War Two in Babyn Yar and many other places. They were shot dead in the forests, near ravines and ditches, and pushed into mass graves. Many of those implicated in those crimes were Ukrainians. Especially conspicuous were OUN fighters who brutalized and killed Jews, and in many cases turned them over to the Germans. It is also true that there were more than 2,500 Righteous Among the Nations – just a few sparks that flashed brightly in the dark twilight of humankind. However, the majority kept silent. Relations between the Ukrainian and Jewish peoples are aimed at the future today.”

COMMENTARY

Yurii SHCHERBAK, diplomat, political writer:

 “The Ukrainian leadership in the person of Iryna Herashchenko has reacted to the statements of Israel’s president in Kyiv. The President of Ukraine said nothing in an apparent attempt not to spoil relations with his Israeli counterpart. So, the leadership has reacted, albeit no so strongly. In my view, speaking at the Verkhovna Rada, President Reuven Rivlin of Israel said nothing new, compared to his predecessors, about the participation of Ukrainian nationalists in the Holocaust. Naturally, these old stereotypes, formed by Soviet propaganda during World War Two, have, unfortunately, left a deep imprint on the mind of many Israelis. I remember a high-ranking Israeli official who came to Ukraine and met the Ukrainian women who had saved him and his brother in Kolomyia, hiding them from the Germans in the basement. But when he came back to Israel (and I was present at that reception as the ambassador of Ukraine), he said that Ukrainians, Greeks, and Poles were some of the most anti-Semitic people – but he did not mention Germans. This surprised me very much, for he had just been to Ukraine and communicated with the Ukrainians who had saved him, risking their own lives. Regretfully, the President of Israel has repeated the same stereotype.”