HAIFA, Israel — During the Russia-Ukraine war a history is made, which is important in itself, but which cannot undo the history of the relationship between Ukrainians and Jews.
Ukraine is bleeding, but this misfortune does not blot out the rivers of blood shed by Jews in Ukraine throughout its history. The myth of the “Nazification” of Ukraine, announced at the beginning of the Russian intervention, does not eliminate from memory the real “Nazification” of Ukraine during World War II and its occupation by the Nazis.
Is it right to remember the complicated relations between the two peoples at a time when Ukraine was a victim of Russian aggression? Wrong, inappropriate, but exactly what the president of Ukraine did was wrong and inappropriate.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Knesset on March 20, 2022, in the midst of the war unleashed by the Russian Federation against the independent Ukraine. The purpose of Russia’s “special military operation” is the traditional imperial one: to deprive Ukraine of its independence and possibly of statehood. Ukraine bravely fights the occupiers. In parallel, its president speaks to parliaments of different countries, asking for help and criticizing their passive position in this conflict. It is his right and duty. For 10 minutes, President Zelensky criticized the Israeli government for not helping Ukraine enough and appealed to history for help, citing the rescue of Jews by Ukrainians during World War II, and arguing that the fate of the Ukrainian people in that aggression was equivalent to the Holocaust.
The fact that Zelensky, a Jew, is in charge of Ukraine cannot change the history of Jewish-Ukrainian relations and does not exempt him from knowing it. On February 24, 2022, Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Ukrainians have a state and an army. They successfully use weapons against the invaders. When German troops invaded Ukraine, the local Jews had no state and no army of their own to defend themselves. They were defenseless. Today, different countries help Ukraine. No one helped Ukrainian Jews during the Nazi occupation. Therefore, it is inappropriate to compare the situation of today’s Ukrainians with that of Ukraine’s Jews at the time. Historians estimate that one and a half million Ukrainian Jews were murdered in Ukraine. This means that every fourth victim of the Holocaust was a Ukrainian Jew. Only 2,673 Ukrainians were named “Righteous among the Nations” for saving Jews from the Nazis. If Ukrainians had actually saved the Jews of Ukraine in large numbers, as President Zelensky claims, the number of Ukrainian Jews killed would have been much lower. Let me try to explain the reasons for such a large extermination of Ukrainian Jews during World War II.
Professor of History Nikolai Pavlovich Poletika, a Ukrainian, a contemporary of and witness to the pogroms in Kyiv in 1918-1919, wrote in his memoir Seen and Endured: “Ukraine is the historical home of the Jewish pogroms.” He was referring to the pogroms of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the Haidamaks, and the Petlyurians. The history of Jewish pogroms in Ukraine reached its climax during World War II. In April 1941, the II Great Congress of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) was held in Rome, which passed the following resolution: “The Zhids in the USSR are the most faithful support of the Bolshevik regime and the vanguard of Moscow’s imperialism in Ukraine. […] The OUN fights the Zhids as a mainstay of the Moscow-Bolshevik regime”.
In May 1941, on the eve of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the OUN developed a plan of uprising — the instruction “Struggle and Activity of the OUN during the War.” There was a call: “Ukraine for the Ukrainians! Death to the Moscow-Zhid Commune! Beat the Commune, save Ukraine! Kill the enemies who are among you — the kikes and sexots (“sexots” are secret Soviet agents)!”
Like the Germans, the OUN members believed that the Jews were Soviet agents. The statement “Jews are the mainstay of Bolshevism” sounded like a sentence to the Jews. This preparations for the Nazi occupation can explain the large number of Jewish victims in Ukraine. According to historian Timothy Snyder, a professor at Yale University, the local Ukrainian population was actively involved in the identification of the Jews and often handed over the Jewish population to the Germans. How many Jews were exterminated by Ukrainian collaborators during World War II is unknown, since no research has been done on the role of Ukrainians in the genocide of the Jews in the newly independent Ukraine. This is why Ukrainians, including their president, repeat the lie about the rescue of the Jews by representatives of their people.
I lived in Kyiv for 32 years. During that time, antisemitism was rampant in Soviet Ukraine. It could be divided into two categories: the state antisemitism of the USSR and the people’s antisemitism based on Ukrainian traditions. In recent years, the dominant view in Ukraine and beyond has been that antisemitism in Ukraine has disappeared or exists to an insignificant extent. Where has the traditional Ukrainian antisemitism, not condemned by the new independent Ukraine, not investigated, but hidden by its historians, gone? I would name two reasons for the decrease of antisemitism in the country:
1. There are many times fewer Jews in Ukraine than there were in the USSR. In the 1970s every 11th Kyiv resident was a Jew. Since Jews have always been active, their numbers seemed to be greater than they actually were. Antisemitism has declined sharply due to the steep decline in the number of Jews, constantly continuing due to emigration, and the assimilation of Jews.
2. Because of her difficult struggle for independence, Ukraine has so many problems that Jews no longer occupy it as much as they once did. In Soviet times, Jews were the imaginary enemies of Ukrainians, negative images in the national folklore. In anti-Soviet times Jews are still sometimes attributed evil actions on the side of Soviet power, but the real enemies of Ukraine, threatening it from Moscow, are much more dangerous for it than the Jews. There is a war between the two Slavic peoples for and against the independence of one from the other. It is a serious struggle, important and tragic. The Jews have never been the favorites of the two struggling peoples. In the pre-Soviet and Soviet times the Jews intended to become part of the international society in the USSR, where they wished to find equality with the Slavic peoples. They were not able to do this, and they left and are leaving Ukraine and Russia in large numbers. Most of the Jews remaining in Ukraine are fighting for the right to be Ukrainians and are actively fighting for the independent Ukraine and their place in it. Since Jews are an endangered population in Ukraine, perhaps their dissolution in Ukraine has some prospect.
However, I will still ask the Jewish question: can antisemitism in Ukraine raise its head again? To some extent, the answer to this question depends on whether the war unleashed in Ukraine by Russia can reawaken antisemitism. If a Jew brilliantly plays the role of Ukraine’s president in the movie series “Servant of the People,” it’s funny and original. But the great comic actor Zelensky has become the tragic hero of the Ukrainian people. As such, he represents Ukraine. Until when will the Jewish president represent the Ukrainian nation and what can come out of it? The war unleashed by Russia has created an enormous economic, political, and humanitarian crisis during Zelensky’s presidency. A war of attrition is underway, which could exhaust the country to the point of threatening the disappearance of its statehood.
One possible outcome of Ukraine’s confrontation with Russia could be the path, which in the Jewish history can be described as the path of the commander of ancient Judea, Shimon Bar Kokhba. He led a revolt of the Jews against the Romans under the Emperor Hadrian in the years 132-136 A.D. This revolt was another attempt to restore Jewish statehood, which, however, led to its loss. Despite strong and at first successful resistance, this revolt against the Roman Empire ended in a crushing defeat for the Jews, the destruction of the country, the renaming of Jerusalem as the Roman city of Elia Capitolina, the death of 580,000 Jews, the captivity, exile and sale into slavery of large masses of people. Bar Kokhba was a brave man, but he organized a losing war that resulted in the loss of the statehood of Judea. If Zelensky brings Ukraine to the state of Judea in the Bar Kokhba rebellion by his intransigence, will the Ukrainian people honor their Jewish leader for a war that was destructive to the nation and its statehood? The other direction of events is a humiliating compromise with Russia, concessions painful to national self-esteem, for which Zelensky could be labeled a traitor.
Zelensky’s leading role in the war with Russia is stunning and mesmerizing. But somewhere in the background flashes the lights of tragicomedy: the main Ukrainian is a Jew! So far, Zelensky’s “game” is magnificent. In Israel, however, he fakes it. In any country his tragic role was accepted and respected; sympathy for the tragedy was assured. But in Jerusalem he overplayed his hand, for he compared the tragedy of his country to the tragedy of the Holocaust, the tragedy of a people without a country, without help or sympathy everywhere, including in Ukraine. Whether Zelensky will play his part in the long-term recognition of himself as the leader of Ukraine remains to be seen.
There are many examples in the history of Jews trying to improve European countries, including Russia, and of nothing good coming out of this, either for these countries or for the Jews. History gives examples of Jews, leaders of European countries, who did much for the benefit of the peoples of those countries and failed and were defeated. Whether Ukraine will become an exception to the rule of Jewish leaders’ failures, the future will show. And what does the past show?
On June 24, 1922, Walter Rathenau, Germany’s foreign minister, was assassinated by nationalists. He was Europe’s most important statesman of Jewish origin. The assassins called him the “Elder of Zion,” a character from the antisemitic forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion who wanted to seize power over the world. At the beginning of World War I, Rathenau organized the new National Economy Department of the War Ministry, which he headed for eight months. He created Europe’s first state economic system subordinated to the interests of the war machine, organized dozens of state companies, hired hundreds of capable scientists, economists, and administrators, without whom Germany would have quickly lost the war.
Rathenau implemented the invention of Nobel laureate chemistry professor Fritz Haber, a German patriot and baptized Jew, by building fertilizer and explosives plants based on the scientist’s invention of a method for extracting ammonia from the air. The saltpeter needed to extract ammonia from the ground was not available in Germany, which was blockaded by the British navy. Without a system of such extraordinary measures, Germany would probably have been defeated in a few months. When Albert Einstein persuaded Rathenau to resign, he replied, “I am a German of Jewish origin […]. My people are German people, my homeland is Germany. My religion is that the German faith is above all religions. […] I am the right man in the right place.” Perhaps Zelensky’s reasoning is similar to that of Rathenau.
Rathenau did immeasurably more for Germany than Zelensky did for Ukraine, but his mission was a failure. Whether the Jewish president can remain a hero and savior of Ukraine for a long time remains to be seen. Will he be able to bring misfortune upon the Jewish people because of his activities, as Rathenau did?
As history shows, it is quite possible. When German ultra-patriot Fritz Haber died in 1934, Einstein wrote to his family, “His tragedy is the tragedy of the German Jew, the tragedy of his unrequited love for his homeland.” History will show whether Ukraine will share the love that the Jewish patriots, led by Zelensky, have for it.
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Alex Gordon is a native of Kiev, Ukraine, and graduate of the Kiev State University and the Technion in Haifa (Doctor of Science, 1984). He immigrated to Israel in 1979. He is a Full Professor (Emeritus) of Physics in the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the Academic College of Education. He is the author of eight books and about 500 articles in print and online, and has been published in 62 journals in 14 countries in Russian, Hebrew, English, and German.