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Ukrainian Ambassador Claims His Country Aided Jews during the Holocaust. History Says Otherwise
(Ha'aretz) Ofer Aderet - The Ukrainian ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Korniychuk, said Tuesday: "We think everyone remembers the Second World War, when Ukrainians helped rescue Jews." Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial center, recognizes 2,673 Ukrainian Righteous Gentiles, among the highest statistically, but not relative to the number of Jews who were living in Ukraine at the time - 2.4 million on the eve of the war - or to the total Ukrainian population. In Israel, there are Jews who owe their lives to a handful of Ukrainians who helped them in their time of need. But alongside the handful who rescued Jews, there were many others who did exactly the opposite. They hunted them down, turned them over to the Nazis and even murdered them with their own hands - all with enthusiasm and joy, and without force or invitation. Many of the guards at the extermination camps were Ukrainian. Some 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. "Without the massive help of Ukrainian auxiliary police units, the Germans would have had a very difficult time murdering so many Jews so quickly," said Prof. Omer Bartov. "Whether it was putting Jews into railway cars or murdering them on the spot, in both cases, they needed to be located, collected and led along." In addition, there were Ukrainian nationalist organizations that operated independently to murder Jews. Canadian-American historian John-Paul Himka's new book, Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust, describes how Ukrainian nationalist militias raided Jewish hiding places, found those sheltering with local families and in the forests, and handed them over to the Germans or murdered them themselves. The Yad Vashem website contains testimony from a senior Nazi officer recounting that his office received many reports from Ukrainians about Jews hiding near Babi Yar. "The number of reports was so great that due to a lack of manpower, the office couldn't handle them all," he said. In Ukraine of today, even while the country's president is a Jew, sympathy remains for the national heroes who collaborated with the Nazis. In 2015, the Ukrainian parliament approved laws banning criticism of anyone who fought for Ukrainian independence in the 20th century, "despite the fact that one of the most important movements that struggled for independence actively collaborated in the wave of anti-Semitism and violence against Jews following the Nazi invasion," said Holocaust researcher Dr. Efraim Zuroff. The birthday of Stefan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist leader who collaborated with the Nazis, was recently proclaimed a national holiday.