IN THE PRESS: Ringing some wrong alarm bells regarding Jewish life in Ukraine (01/15/95)

IN THE PRESS

Ringing some wrong alarm bells regarding Jewish life in Ukraine

by Martin J. Plax

There is a common maxim, often expressed but not always true, that generals are always fighting the last war. It warns that those who interpret the present as merely a repeat of the past will almost certainly inaccurately respond to the present situation and create conditions for repeating the past they'd hoped to escape.

This mistake accounts for the outbreak of the many civil wars in the post-Cold War world. Economic and political stability rest on people interpreting the world in economic terms. But people who see the world in terms of an unreconciled conflict between present and past are likely to believe that economic calculations are secondary, if not entirely beside the point. That's why the American government, in addition to aiding in the development of viable economies in many new countries, is also joining in efforts by leaders in those countries to reconcile their present with their past.

For example, several years ago, President George Bush sent representation (including Cleveland's Taras Szmagala) to the Ukrainian government's commemoration of the massacre of Ukrainian Jews and Christians at Babyn Yar. More recently, President Bill Clinton publicly acknowledged the monumental suffering of millions of people in Eastern and Central Europe during World War II and noted that the Allied victory depended strongly on the Soviet army. Such reconciliations are important politically.

But not every American is sensitive to what reconciliation between past and present actually requires. In some instances, they not only fail to deal honestly with the present by selectively remembering the past, but they spread a false alarm and encourage responses that contribute to decreasing chances of reconciliation.

For example, on a segment of the October 23 edition of "60 Minutes" called "The Ugly Face of Democracy," reporter Morley Safer claimed that there is a serious threat to Jews living in western Ukraine. The report suggested that American Jews should mobilize efforts to evacuate them immediately. But the most prominent Ukrainian Jew to appear in the report denied the validity of the claim.

The report opened with film of a small group of xenophobic (and openly anti-Semitic) ultra nationalists in the city of Lviv (the Ukrainian spelling), with the response by the chief rabbi of Ukraine, Rabbi Yaakov Bleich, saying "They want the Jews out." But as the program continued, it wasn't at all clear that the rabbi's remark was limited to that group and not the entire Ukrainian nation.

But the program did more. With footage of a church service, men praying and unspecified marchers passing on the screen, Safer's voice stated: "The church and the government have tried to ease people's fears, suggesting that things are not as serious as they might appear; that Ukrainians, despite the allegations, are not generically [sic - the actual word used was genetically - ed.] anti-Semitic. But to a Jew living here, or to one who only remembers the place with horror, such statements are little comfort among the flickering torches of Lvov" (the non-Ukrainian name).

The report concluded with Simon Wiesenthal, who doesn't live in Ukraine, saying, "They have not changed."

Rabbi Bleich, who does live in Ukraine, didn't agree with either Safer or Wiesenthal. On seeing a videotape of the show, he wrote to CBS reminding it that while he acknowledged the hostile group, he had spent most of the interview describing how Jewish life in Ukraine was reviving and how the Ukrainian government was actively supporting that revival.

(This was exactly what he had said to both Cleveland's Ukrainian and Jewish communities when he was here as my guest last November.)

In an interview published in The Ukrainian Weekly, (a national Ukrainian American newspaper) Rabbi Bleich said Ukraine was a society in transition toward democracy and that he was optimistic the government would respond to the anti-democratic element more forcefully as it became more stable and economically viable.

"60 Minutes" also "revealed" that certain streets in Lviv were being renamed after Ukrainian nationalist heroes, men who inspired resistance to the rule of outsiders: to Polish kings, and to both Soviet and Nazi regimes.

But one group's heroes are sometimes another group's villains. In each case, the men in question are associated in the minds of many Jews with periods of chaos and civil war, when large numbers of Ukrainian Jews were murdered. "60 Minutes" interpreted the change in street names as a further sign of danger to Jews. Again Rabbi Bleich didn't agree "This is not really a concern the way they made it out to be," he said.

The rabbi's positive and calm comments stand in sharp contrast to Safer's provocative, not to say, prejudicial, reference to the allegation of genetic anti-Semitism among Ukrainians. We in Cleveland were particularly struck by the contrast between this report and the balanced and sensitive treatment of the Demjanjuk case written by Plain Dealer reporters Michele Lesie and Bill Sloat.

Fortunately, Ukrainians and Jews have protested this abusive use of language and have joined in an effort to correct the errors in the program. As Americans we all recognize that the United States has a major stake in the stability of democratically inclined governments, and that we must do all we can to overcome the chaotic effects of this false alarm.

Others struggling to reconcile some of our issues might keep in mind that:

While there is increasing availability of information through the mass media, that information may not be a completely unifying force.
There are people in every society who hate pluralism, or what is now called diversity. But even though diversity isn't universally valued, it is universally a fact.
Pluralism, or diversity, anywhere including Cleveland, can be held as a value only when everyone acknowledges that for any specific past event, there may be at least two true and accurate accounts of the way those events were experienced.
Those who deny memories of others will never be able to fully reconcile their own past with the present.
Those who distort the present by assuming that nothing has changed from the past will increase the possibility that they might relive the past from which they had hoped to escape.

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