FACES AND PLACES: Press attacks on Ukrainians continue in Chicago (07/20/97)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Press attacks on Ukrainians continue in Chicago

A few months ago, Chas i Podiyi, (Time and Events), a Chicago-based Ukrainian-language newspaper, published an interview with Yoram Sheftel, Israeli defense attorney for John Demjanjuk, and author of "Defending Ivan the Terrible."

Responding to the interview, a certain Rafael Levchin penned a commentary in My America, a Chicago-based Russian-language newspaper, in which he wrote, among other things, that Mr. Sheftel is a traitor to the Jewish people. "To say Mr. Sheftel sold his soul would be to give him too much honor," wrote Mr. Levchin. "From that kind of soul even Satan would turn away." Ukrainians are infinitely worse than Germans in their treatment of Jews, Mr. Levchin continued. Germans only killed Jews during World War II. Ukrainians have persecuted Jews since the days of Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Ukrainians happily served the Nazi cause by organizing the SS Division Galicia, eight additional German troop divisions, and by orchestrating Babyn Yar, Mr. Levchin concluded. For all those reasons, all Ukrainians are guilty of anti-Semitism and John Demjanjuk is their worthy representative.

Since I am the co-director of the Ukrainian American Justice Committee, the organization that sponsored Mr. Sheftel's appearance before Chicago's Ukrainians, an appearance which led to the original interview in Chas i Podiyi, the editor, himself a Ukrainian American Jew, asked me to reply to Mr. Levchin.

In my response, I suggested, among other things, that Mr. Sheftel was an Israeli patriot who preserved the integrity of the Israeli justice system. Had the innocent John Demjanjuk been hanged following a Soviet-style show trial, the entire free world would have condemned Israel. I also pointed out that Ukrainians never had eight German divisions; that Jews often lived better in Ukraine than Ukrainians, especially in the larger cities; and that it served no useful purpose to hammer away at the guilt of a few Ukrainian criminals. Ukrainians, I pointed out, do not condemn all Jewish people for the crimes of Trotsky, Kameniev, Zinoviev, Sverdlov and Kaganovich.

Mr. Levchin's response to my article recently appeared in Seven Days, another Chicago-based Russian-language newspaper. Following a list of potentially libelous insults too banal to mention, he repeats his Ukrainophobic calumny about Khmelnytsky ("hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed") Petliura, (a "National Socialist, Nazi") and other Ukrainian leaders as was presented in his first article, demanding again that Ukrainians apologize for their crimes. The only reason Israel freed Mr. Demjanjuk was to preserve good relations with Ukraine, Mr. Levchin concludes.

Mr. Levchin's allegation that Israel freed Mr. Demjanjuk to preserve good relations with Ukraine is absurd. In Israel's view of the world, Ukraine is of little consequence.

There is no denying that Jews were massacred during the 1648-1649 rebellion of Bohdan Khmelnytsky. How many were actually killed during the Kozak rampage? According to Prof. Paul R. Magocsi: "Almost without exception, today's specialists on the period reject what they describe as the grossly exaggerated figures in the [Jewish] chronicles. The Israeli scholars Shmuel Ettinger and Bernard Weinryb speak instead of the 'annihilation of tens of thousands of Jewish lives' and the Ukrainian-American historian Jaroslaw Pelenski narrows the number of Jewish deaths to between 6,000 and 14,000." (Magocsi, "A History of Ukraine," 1996). This is far less than the "hundreds of thousands" of Jews Mr. Levchin believes perished.

Turning to more recent times, it should be remembered that a Ministry of Jewish Affairs was established during the days of the first Ukrainian National Republic, making Ukraine the only state to have such a ministry. (See Solomon I. Goldelman, "Jewish National Autonomy in Ukraine, 1917-1920," 1968; Moses Silberfarb, "The Jewish Ministry and Jewish National Autonomy in Ukraine, 1918-1919," translated by Rabbi David H. Lincoln, 1993). Anti-Semites don't establish such ministries.

As for Symon Peltiura, there is substantial evidence that he was, indeed, a friend of the Jews - and not their enemy. During his leadership of Ukraine, the Ministry of Jewish Affairs was reinstituted (see Goldelman) and on August 26, 1919, Petliura issued an order to the troops of the Ukrainian National Republic to "bring the perpetrators [of pogroms] before the courts as enemies of the fatherland" to suffer "the most severe penalties of the law." According to Prof. Taras Hunczak, "the frequently repeated charge that Petliura was anti-Semitic is absurd. Vladimir Jabotinsky, perhaps one of the greatest Jews of the 20th century - a man well-versed in the problems of East European Jewry - categorically rejected the idea of Petliura's animosity towards the Jews..." (Magocsi, pp. 505-506).

And what about Jewish involvement with Soviet oppression? According to Prof. Leonard Shapiro: "Five of the 21 full-time members of the [Soviet] Central Committee were Jews - among them Trotsky and Sverdlov, the real master of the small but vital secretarial apparatus of the party ... Jews abounded at the lower levels of the party machinery, especially in the Cheka and its successors, the GPU, the OGPU and the NKVD (Shapiro, "The Role of Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement," Slavonic and East European Review, December 1961).

Were Ukrainians involved in war crimes against innocent Jews during World War II? Tragically, yes. According to the Israeli War Crimes Commission, some 11,000 Ukrainians, out of a population of 36 million, were involved with anti Jewish measures (Stefan T. Possony, "The Ukrainian Jewish Problem: A Historical Perspective," Plural Societies, Winter 1974). How can the involvement of .0003 percent of the Ukrainian population in crimes against Jews warrant the conclusion that all Ukrainians are born anti-Semites?

I believe far more Ukrainians assisted Jews during World War II than killed them. Many of them have been recognized and honored by the Israeli government. Unfortunately, many more of those who helped were killed by the Nazis along with the Jews they helped. Their stories will never be told. Perhaps the greatest assistance came from the Ukrainian Catholic Church under the leadership of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. This has been documented by Jewish sources.

It is sad that, at a time when Ukrainian-Jewish relations in Ukraine are better then ever, Old World toxins continue to pollute the atmosphere in America.

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: [email protected]

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